INTERSUBJECTIVITY AND THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF HEGEL

A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES

OF MIDDLE EAST TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY

BY

GÜÇLÜ ATEŞOĞLU

IN PARTIAL FULFILLEMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS

IN THE DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY

SEPTEMBER 2003

Approval of the Graduate School of Social Sciences

_____________________ Prof. Dr. Sencer Ayata Director

I certify that this thesis satisfies all the requirements as a thesis for the degree of Master of Science.

_____________________ Prof. Dr. Ahmet İnam Head of Department

This is to certify that we have read this thesis and that in our opinion it is fully adequate, in scope and quality, as a thesis for the degree of Master of Science.

_____________________ Prof. Dr. Ahmet İnam Supervisor

Examining Committee Members

Prof. Dr. Ahmet İnam _____________________

Prof. Dr. Yasin Ceylan _____________________

Yrd. Doç. Dr. Eyüp Ali Kılıçaslan _____________________

iii

ABSTRACT

INTERSUBJECTIVITY AND THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF HEGEL

Ateşoğlu, Güçlü

M.S., Department of Philosophy

Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Ahmet İnam

September 2003, 95 pages

Hegel’s system, with a purpose of being the newest philosophy, represents a

turning point in the history of thought. In contrast to the philosophical thought of

Enlightenment which seperates branches of knowledge, or that of philosophy,

Hegel tries to recombine them. In this study, I intended to reveal the close

connection of the concepts appeared in the two works of Georg Wilhelm

Friedrich Hegel, namely, The Phenomenology of Spirit (Phänomenologie des

Geistes) and Elements of the Philosophy of Right (Grundlinien der Philosophie

des Rechts). These concepts are consciousness, self-consciousness, desire,

recognition, freedom and intersubjectivity that are very important for considering

iv

self-actualization of the individual and for understanding also the process of

human socialization. In this sense, Hegel’s philosophy, in general, is an attempt

to analyze modern society through the light of these conceptions which are still

central to our aspirations as reflective social beings.

Keywords: intersubjectivity, subjectivity, consciousness, self-consciousness,

desire, recognition, freedom.

v

ÖZ

HEGEL FELSEFESİNDE ÖZNELERARASILIK VE ÖZGÜRLÜK SORUNU

Ateşoğlu, Güçlü

Yüksek Lisans, Felsefe Bölümü

Tez Yöneticisi: Prof.Dr. Ahmet İnam

Eylül 2003, 95 sayfa

En yeni felsefe olma amacı taşıyan Hegel’in sistemi, düşünce tarihinde bir dönüm

noktasını sergiler. Felsefe ya da genel olarak bilgi disiplinlerini birbirinden ayıran

Aydınlanmanın felsefe düşüncesine karşıtlıkla, Hegel onları tekrar birleştirmeye

çalışır. Bu çalışmada ben, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’in iki önemli eseri

olan Tin’in Görüngübilimi ve Hukuk Felsefesinin İlkeleri’nde beliren kavramlar

arasındaki yakın ilişkiyi göstermeye çalıştım. Bu kavramlar bilinç, özbilinç, istek,

tanınma/kabul edilme, özgürlük ve öznelerarasılıktır ki, bireyin öz-edimselleş-

vi

mesini düşünmede ve insani toplumsallaşma sürecini anlamada çok önemli bir

yere sahiptirler. Bu anlamda genel olarak Hegel felsefesi, modern toplumu,

reflektif toplumsal varlıklar olarak bizim beklentilerimize hala merkezi önemde

olan bu kavramların ışığında bir çözümleme girişimidir.

Anahtar Sözcükler: Öznelerarasılık, öznellik, bilinç, özbilinç, istek,

tanınma/kabul edilme, özgürlük.

vii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am particularly grateful to Prof. Dr. Ahmet İnam for his valuable guidance and

suggestions throughout the development of the present study. Without his

unfailing support and encouragement, this study would have been never

completed. He also encouraged me to develop a personal perspective on the

issues in a way much deeper then I would have done otherwise. I wish to thank

Prof. Dr. Yasin Ceylan and Dr. Eyüp Ali Kılıçaslan for their critical evaluations. I

would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Çiğdem Pala Mull who made valiant

efforts to improve the quality of my writing. I must also thank Derya Hasırcı,

Mine Demirtaş, Dr. Nebil Reyhani, Dr. Hatice Nur Erkızan, Sinan Kadir Çelik,

Cem Kamözüt and Erdem Çiftçi for their constant support and friendship during

my preoccupation with this work. I’m certain that my work is better as a result of

the many talks we’ve had over the years. There is no doubt, however, that all

possible errors and confusions that remain in the pages to follow are my

responsibility alone. Finally, two great persons, Prof. Dr. Doğan Özlem and Prof.

Dr. Hasan Ünal Nalbantoğlu, have become a guide for me in the darkness of the

pathways of philosophical thinking. I wish to thank both of them.

viii

I hereby declare that all information in this document has been obtained and presented in accordance with academic rules and ethical conduct. I also declare that, as required by these rules and conduct, I have fully cited and referenced all material and results that are not original to this work.

Date: Signature:

ix

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ...........................................................................................................iii ÖZ ............................................................................................................................ v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.................................................................................... vii TABLE OF CONTENTS ...................................................................................... ix

CHAPTER

1. INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................ 1 2. INTERSUBJECTIVITY vs. SUBJECTIVITY.......................................... 5

2.1. Transcendental Subjectivity.......................................................................5

2.2. Speculative Philosophy of Hegel ..............................................................10

2.3. Desire and The Struggle For Recognition...............................................15

2.4. Subjectivity Revisited ...............................................................................35 3. FREEDOM.................................................................................................. 44

3.1. Kant on Freedom ......................................................................................45

3.2. Freedom and Intersubjectivity in Fichte.................................................52

3.3. Hegel’s Criticism of Kant .........................................................................60

3.4. Sittlichkeit vs. Moralität ...........................................................................65

3.5. Hegel on Freedom .....................................................................................74

3.6. Freedom Revisited.....................................................................................79 4. CONCLUSION ........................................................................................... 86

BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................ 92

1

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Hegel’s system, with a purpose of being the newest philosophy, represents a

turning point in the history of thought. In contrast to the philosophical thought of

Enlightenment which seperates branches of knowledge, or that of philosophy,

Hegel tries to recombine them. Because of this reason, he was the last philosopher

according to the classical meaning of the term. In this study, I will try to exhibit

that Hegel’s intention is to construct a philosophical system within which different

and seperate branches of philosophy, in other words, different disciplines of

knowledge, in general, are put together and through this striving, unity and

wholeness of life compartments are tried to be displayed. For this aim, the

emphasis on the identity of or the wholeness of human being will be understood

from a larger scale of wholeness. Thus the relation between the unity of the ‘self’

and that of ‘Being’ will be a fundamental problem of the thesis.

This emphasis which is put on the unity of the human self and that of ‘Being’ does

not exclude the role of ‘contingency’ as some people suppose that this unity does

not include contingeny and difference. On the contrary, Hegel’s philosophical

standpoint takes contingency and difference as a necessary counterpart of unity

and identity. In Hegel’s philosophical system ‘historical contingencies’ and

2

‘logical necessity’ are essentially brought together while explaining the historical

development of the self.

In this study, I intend to reveal the close connection of the concepts appeared in

the two works of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, namely, The Phenomenology of

Spirit (Phänomenologie des Geistes) and Elements of the Philosophy of Right

(Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts). These concepts are consciousness, self-

consciousness, desire, recognition, freedom and intersubjectivity that are very

important for considering self-actualization of the individual and for understanding

also the process of human socialization. In this sense, Hegel’s philosophy, in

general, is an attempt to analyze modern society through the light of these

conceptions which are still central to our aspirations as reflective social beings.

This provides that Hegel is still regarded to be an important social thinker by a

large number of people.

The most important problem for Hegel is to reconcile two poles of philosophical

study, i.e., subject and object, particular and universal, individual and society, part

and whole, finite and infinite. When the life of self-consciousness in the ‘process

of recognition’ implies infinity as infinite possibility to change and evolve, death

in the process of recognition refers to the concept of finitude, namely, sensuous

being of man. Hence, philosophical study starts with the struggle between life and

death, namely, infinite character of man and finite character of him. Hegel, in his

most famous work, The Phenomenology of Spirit, tries to analyze the two essential

characters of man by considering the conflictual-historical context of mankind.

3

In the first chapter of my thesis, the main concern, at first, will be the critical

consideration of ‘subjectivity’, systematically elaborated in the critical philosophy

of Immanuel Kant and then I will try to explain Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s

aim at criticizing Kant’s critical philosophy by initiating and emphasizing the term

‘intersubjectivity’.

Firstly, I will try to expose the concept of ‘subjectivity’ having a very important

role in Kant’s critical/reflective philosophy and then analyze its crucial importance

in the history of philosophy. We already know that ‘transcendental unity of

apperception’ has a crucial place in Kant’s philosophy to explain the role of

subjectivity. So, I will start giving importance to this concept and then try to look

at it in the light of Hegel’s criticim.

Finally, I will try to elaborate on the justification of ‘intersubjectivity’ by

comparing and criticizing with ‘subjectivity’. Surely the main concern, in this last

section, will be the concept of ‘recognition’ (Anerkennung). I call it ‘recognition’,

because neither Fichte nor Hegel did speak of the term ‘intersubjectivity’ in their

writings, but instead speak of ‘recognition’. Giving the importance of the term

‘recognition’, I aim to exhibit the paradigm shift in history of philosophy from

contemplative ones to philosophy of language and that of praxis. This change

provided the transformation of the relationship between ‘subject and object’ into

the relationship between ‘language and world’ or into the relationship between

‘work and world’. This is the search for the practice of ‘Lebenswelt’ (life-world) in

which different realization of mind, that is to say, various forms of it, come to

appear.

4

In the third chapter of my thesis, I intend, at first, to compare Kant’s and Fichte’s

concept of freedom with that of Hegel. In contrast to Kant, Hegel’s concern is

actually different and ethics and political philosophy are not seperate at all as they

are in Kant’s practical philosophy. I will emphasize this difference between two

great philosophers and, at final stage of the thesis, I will try to comment on both of

these two chapters under the concepts of intersubjectivity and freedom.

5

CHAPTER II

INTERSUBJECTIVITY vs. SUBJECTIVITY

2.1. Transcendental Subjectivity

Before starting to demonstrate how the term ‘intersubjectivity’ first appears in the

philosophy of Hegel, I would like to begin with the key concept of the mentalist

tradition, namely, Kantian ‘transcendental subjectivity’. I said ‘key concept’,

because all philosophies of consciousness since Kant have been precisely

influenced by this concept in their reasonings. Hence, it will be useful in our

discussions to start with.

The Mentalist Tradition, beginning with Descartes, started with a question of how

autonomy of reason (or mind) is possible for us. According to many contemporary

thinkers, such as Habermas, this was the ‘epistemological turning point’ in the

history of philosophy. Habermas claims that:

...The ‘innovation’ is indicated by the third term, i.e., ‘idea’ or ‘representation’ that now mediates between the knowing subject and the world. While the subject is one who has representings of objects, the world contains everything that can be represented by a subject for itself...In representing my representings, I disclose an internal space, called ‘subjectivity’.1

1 Habermas,J., ‘From Kant to Hegel and Back Again’, European Journal of Philosophy, July 99,

Vol.7, Issue 2, pp.129-158.

6

This leads to a new conceptualization of knowledge in terms of a subject

dependent ideas of objects. Ability of consciousness is something which provides

the possibility of my knowledge. We can acquire knowledge of objects in virtue of

self-reflection, reflection on myself as a subject having ideas or representations of

whatever objects.

According to Kant, empricism could not explain the ‘organons’ of which enable

the unity of experience and could not also exhibit the examination of the

possibility of experience. It is very important for the continental philosophy to

show the deficiency of empricism that they (empricists) could not reveal the cause

of the difference between two perceptions. Kant here fills the gap which has still

been keeping to disturb contemporary empricists’ mind. The answer to the

question is ‘transcendental unity of apperception’, we can also name it as

‘consciousness’ (Bewußtsein).

Prior to the seventeenth century there was no specific term corresponding

‘consciousness’; it was not considered to be a property of the mind or senses but

one of their actions. Descartes describes acts of becoming conscious, not acts of a

consciousness, while Spinoza describes the act of the soul becoming aware of

itself as ‘sensibility’. The term consciousness is first used consistently by Locke,

and following him by Leibniz, where he uses the term ‘consciosite’. Locke defines

consciousness as the perception of what passes in a man’s own mind and derives it

from acts of that consciousness.2

2 Caygill, Howard, A Kant Dictionary, Blackwell, Oxford, Cambridge, Mass, 1995.

7

When we turn back to Kant, his main concern is to argue for the fact of

consciousness to that of personal identity, making consciousness the basis of a

subject: For it is the same consciousness that makes a man be himself, ‘personal

identity’ depends on that only.3 Every endeavour to know something needs to

‘knowing subject’, that is to say, it depends upon the very condition of

consciousness to be. Kant defines consciousness in Logic as the representation that

another representation is in me which forms the universal condition of all

cognition in general. It is held to ‘accompany’ all cognitions, determining their

form or the how (as opposed to the matter or ‘what’ of cognition).4

According to Kant, each nature of consciousness has the capability of knowing

itself as well. This is what he wants to say with ‘self-reflection’. In every

experience of a certain object, there is the capability to know ‘I’ that perceives,

knows, and conceives the object. ‘I think’ must be able to accompany all my

representations, according to Kant, otherwise it will contemplate representations

which are not mine, and that is contradictory. Kant reaches this ‘I think’ using the

logical principle of non-contradiction, simply by explaining what is meant by ‘my

representations’. Thus that the representations are mine means that I unite them in

one ‘self-consciousness’. In other words, only in so far as I can grasp the manifold

of the representations in one consciousness, do I call them ‘one’ and all mine. The

basis of the identity of consciousness is the ‘transcendental unity of apperception’.

The identity of the consciousness of myself at different times is only a formal

3 Kant, I., Critique of Pure Reason, tr.by Norman Kemp Smith, St.Martin’s Press, Boston, Bedford,

New York, 1965, A361-362. 4 Caygill, H., ibid.

8

condition of my thoughts and their coherence, and in no way proves the numerical

identity of my subject.5 This formal condition is the product of an ‘act of

spontaneity’ which cannot be invested in any emprical subject; it is that self-

consciousness which, while getting the representation ‘I think’ (a representation

which must be capable of accompanying all other representations, and which in all

consciousness is one and the same), cannot itself be accompanied by any further

representation. This act, identical with pure apperception, produces the

‘transcendental unity of self-consciousness’ which is both the condition and

accompaniment of experience while not being itself a possible object of

experience. It provides an a priori horizon for the judgements experience which are

none other than the ‘unity of representations in consciousness’.6

‘Transcendental unity of apperception’ is one of the cornerstones of critical

philosophy, of particular significance for the deduction of the a priori universality

and necessity of the categories. The unity which enables judgements to be made

has to be sought ‘yet higher’ in that which itself contains the ground of the unity of

diverse concepts in judgement, and therefore of the possibility of the

understanding, even as regards its logical employment. It is found in

‘transcendental apperception’ or the highest principle in the whole sphere of

human knowledge.7 For Kant, it is only on the basis of our cognitive faculties that

our knowledge has any objective meaning. ‘Transcendental subjectivity’, as the

basis of the possibility of experience is not valid only subjectively but also

5 Kant, I., ibid., A363. 6 Kant,I., Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, tr.by Lewis White Beck, Liberal Arts Press,

New York, 1950, p.22. 7 Kant,I., Critique of Pure Reason, B135.

9

objectively. But with him, ‘objectivity’ is contemplated within the general

structure of ‘cognitive faculties’. In order for something to become an object, that

is to say, to be able to mention the objectness of the object, it has to be mediated

by the subject.

Kant begins with the idea that the knowing subject determines the conditions

under which it can be affected by sensory input. The knowing subject is conceived

as an ‘operating subject’ that is framed with perfect spontaneity, an order of its

own according to ideas, to which it adapts the empirical conditions. Kant, here,

stresses the internal relations between critical self-reflection and emancipation.

The ‘spontaneous mind’ conceptually forms the sensory raw material, thereby

bringing unity and universality to the manifold of numerous disordered particulars.

As in Kant's general discussion of freedom, ‘spontaneity’' combines the two

properties of freedom: (i) free from external determination and (ii) free to self-

legislate. In Critique of Pure Reason, Kant claims that only through the

combination of ‘receptivity for impressions’ and ‘the power of knowing an object

through spontaneity of concepts’, may knowledge arise. Receptivity can only

make knowledge possible when combined with ‘spontaneity’.8

Although he considers the notion of the constitutive role of transcendental

subjectivity, we see that Kant remains essentially at the level of the subject-object

relation. The relation of subject towards itself (in thematizing its legitimacy) and

towards others (the theme of intersubjectivity) is not investigated any further. In

order to reach the objectivity of experience, Kant postulates universal subjectivity.

8 Ibid., A97.

10

But the fundamental characteristics or possibility of transcendental subjectivity is

not thematized, so, as Miloviç mentions, it loses its universality. Thus the ‘cogito’,

that is Kantian ‘apperception’, remains unrelated to ‘others’. Kant, on the one

hand, postulates universal subjectivity, and on the other, remains at the level of the

monological, solipsistic subject of ‘isolated reflection’.9

2.2. Speculative Philosophy of Hegel

Hegel, from one point of view, is Spinozist. We can easily see that Hegel, like

Spinoza, puts an emphasis on unity or on wholistic character of reality in which all

negations are determinations and, conversely, all determinations are negations.

Moreover, Hegel also, like Spinoza, excludes any transcendency in his

philosophical system. Individual is included within the framework of the one all

embracing unity. But the difference between these two great philosophers, is their

conceptions of ‘subject’. Hegel mentions, in his Lectures on the History of

Philosophy, that individual is forgotten and is not free at all in Spinoza’s

geometrical structure of philosophy.10 Within ‘substance’, we find only the

thinking human subjects conceived as ‘finite modes’ of substance. Hegel will, in

this connection, defence the ‘infinite’ character of human subject. For Hegel,

Spinoza could not sufficiently understand the very essence of the relation between

finitude and infinity.

9 Miloviç, M., Reflexive Argument, A Dissertation, 1989, p.27. 10 Hegel, G.W.F., Lectures on the History of Philosophy, tr.by E.S.Haldane & Frances

S.Simson,Vol.III, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London; Humanities Press, New York, 1974, pp.252-290.

11

Leibniz, from Hegel’s point of view, conceived this relation very well. For Leibniz

claims that each monad expresses the whole universe, namely, absolute reality.

“Every individual substance expresses the whole universe in its own manner” and

“is like an entire world and like a mirror of God, or indeed of the whole world it

portrays, each one in its own fashion; almost as the same city is variously

represented according to the various situations of him who is regarding it.”11 In

this respect, by saying that each monad has the infinite character of individuality,

Hegel prefers Leibniz to Spinoza.

Although Hegel was influenced by immanentist apprehension of universe under

the influence of Cusanus and Spinoza, his thought was exhibiting a critical

distance from them. Because there were Kant’s undeniable traces at the centre of

his philosophical thinking. In Harris’ words, “What knowledge of the absolute

being is and what can be known ‘absolutely’ became ‘critical’ questions for

Hegel.” In his early years, Hegel’s problem of ‘absolute knowledge’ is related to

the problem of our knowledge of ‘God’ and the problem was a theological

problem and “it was through Kant that this theological problem became the

problem of human knowledge in general.”12

Although the central concern of his philosophy is Kant’s critical/reflective

philosophy, Hegel criticizes Kant for seperating theoretical and practical

philosophy. The gulf between the activity of ‘theoria’ and that of ‘praxis’ cannot

be overcome by the ‘reflective judgement’ as Fichte, before Hegel, had already

11 Leibniz, G.W., Discourse on Metaphysics and Other Essays, edited and translated by Daniel

Garber and Roger Ariew, Hackett, Indianapolis, 1991, §IX, Monadology, ibid., §51. 12 Harris, H.S., Hegel: Phenomenology and System, Hackett Pub. Co., Indianapolis,1995, p.3.

12

marked this fact. Hegel’s attempt is to carry on uniting these two seperated poles,

actually is to show that these, at first, cannot be seperated and then to unite again

like Kant, in his Critique of Judgement, had tried to do. Because theoretical and

practical experiences of man presuppose interdependent relations in which action

and contemplation are brought together. By means of this fact, we cannot easily

say that this is Hegel’s epistemology or that is the practical philosophy of him

since different disciplines of knowledge are displayed within their relationships.

Related to the unity of theory and practice we might, in this sense, remember

Fichte’s well-known proposition that “Thinking is acting.” He claimed that

practical ‘I’ is the starting point for any theory or philosophy in general. Fichtean

‘I’ and intersubjective character of his philosophy leads to Hegel’s philosophy

which involves experience of consciousness evolving towards ‘absolute knowing’.

In this way, activity of consciousness and the process of cognition through the

recognition of other(s) have the ethico-social character in implication. With that,

we pass into ethics and social philosophy going beyond theory of knowledge and it

proves unity between different branches of philosophy in general.

Hence, when we are talking about the knowledge in general, it should not be

understood necessarily in reference to cognition, but in reference to the relation of

cognition and action. Hegel tries to explain, in his Phenomenology of Spirit, how

the interrelationship of cognition and action come together in the experience of

consciousness.The Phenomenology does not present experience in the unilateral

form. The most important aspect of the Hegelian critique of Kant is the emphasis

on ‘experience’. I think this is the turning point in the history of philosophy and

with Fichte’s and Hegel’s contribition to philosophy, a new sphere was opened.

13

With that all dualistic structures of philosophy were cracked. I shall try to

elaborate on this ‘ethico-ontological’ character of experience in the next section.

At the end of the first section called ‘Transendental Subjectivity’, we are faced

with such a problem that Kant simply presupposes the subject whose spiritual

possibilities are being investigated. Kant never discusses the fact that knowledge is

always given in language, that is to say, to me as the one who speaks, who belongs

to the community of communication. Here, language, work, culture are key

concepts before the possibility of any given knowledge.

From this point of view, for Hegel, subject is not finished and given as appeared in

Kant, but is established by the development of thought. Reason does not exist a

priori; its potentiality has to be actualized in practice, it develops in human

consciousness as unfolding in the procession of human manifestations - in history.

In this connection, ‘action’ and ‘contemplation’ are both considered together in the

history of mankind. Hegel takes the concept of action and also that of interaction,

from Fichte, while constructing his system of philosophy. I will later explain the

close connection of the ideas between Fichte and his follower, Hegel.

One of Hegel’s major discoveries in the Phenomenology of Spirit is that every

‘given’ is a process of negativity, of activity that brings it about. Reason is not

ahistorical, so Hegel grasps the rationality implicit in history. This is the

conceptual transformation effected by Hegel, and clearly, even in the absence of

the term ‘historicity’, the relations between reason and history, time and concept,

‘Spirit’ (Geist) and its becoming, implied by this transformation are not peripheral

but central issues of Hegelian philosophy.

14

In contrast to Kant’s discourse of distinguishing between subject and object -

knowing subject and thing-in-itself (Ding-an-sich), Hegel speaks of their unity.

‘Speculation’ establishes the identity of thought and reality -or infinite and finite13

which ‘reflection’ finds unconceivable. On the basis of the concept of ‘speculatio’,

Hegel reaches a more ‘mature’ concept of subject which is determined not on the

basis of the concept of spiritual faculties, but is determined by a clear historical

and social domain. The experience of self-consciousness is not any more

conceived as original. It comes into being only within the framework of

‘intersubjectivity’ as interaction. Therefore, self-consciousness, in Hegel,

presupposes ‘interaction’ and ‘history’. The subjectivity which is presupposed in

Kant must, in Hegel’s sense, be historically developed. Hence, it cannot be named

transcendental subjectivity, but is established only through the medium of

language, work and interaction.

Hegel, by putting aside all the oppositions such as subject vs. external world, or

self vs. other and by emancipating subject from the prison of self-enclosed

interiority of an ego narcissistically aware of its own operations , describes the

subject as involved in process and embedded in contexts that anticipate the

possibilities of, and provides the links for, any actual subject-object relation. The

subject finds itself already connected with an environment and functioning as a

part of it. Speakers and actors find themselves in set of established performances

13 Hegel’s ‘idealism’ is the point of view which denies that things and the finite world have true

reality. For Hegel, the idealism of philosophy consists in nothing else than in recognizing that the finite has no veritable being. Idealism ascribes being to the ‘infinite’, the ‘spirit’. A philosophy which ascribed veritable, ultimate, absolute being to finite existence as such, in Hegel’s view, would not deserve the name of philosophy.

15

and practices. A subject cannot be with itself before being with an other.

Comparing with this fact, mentalist tradition starts with an opposition of subject

and object prior to any actual interrelationship of them.14

2.3. Desire and The Struggle For Recognition

According to Hegel, knowing can only be understood in the context of social

praxis, which is grounded by the desire to the ‘struggle for recognition’. He

suggests that scientific thinking must be seen in the larger context of human social

interaction. In this sense, ‘historical social praxis’ and ‘historical change’ are the

conditions of the possibility of cognitive transformation. Knowledge corresponds

to its concept by being embedded in social praxis. In this section, I will briefly

explain and discuss the ‘human desire’ and ‘struggle for recognition’ that are

worked out by Hegel in The Phenomenology of Spirit. These two concepts were

very influential on Alexandre Kojève’s Inroduction to the Reading of Hegel (1969)

and on contemporary philosopher, Jürgen Habermas, especially in his early

writings.

Human nature, as expressed not in essentialist meaning, is historically situated so

that the sources of self can be, in this way, exhibited in and through history.

Hence, ‘self’ posits (Fichte) and actualizes itself within external world (Hegel),

that is to say, within society, nature, etc., by his own action.

It [Hegel’s theory] views the human nature to be actualized as a ‘historical’ product, the results of a dialectical process of experience involving the acquisition of self-knowledge, the

14 Habermas, J. From Kant to Hegel and Back Again, p.138.

16

struggle to actualize the self, and an interaction between these activities, which modifies the self that is known and actualized.15

In Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, we are faced with the historical development

of desire and recognition dialectically in every aspects of life, labor and language.

I think this complex dialectic includes several possibilities in social philosophy

and many implications on political ground. For Wood, Hegel’s theory is a theory

of ‘self-actualization’, which is based on ‘a complex conception of human nature’.

“Hegel follows Fichte in regarding the human self as ‘fundamentally’ a striving of

the ‘I’ against the ‘not-I’, of self against otherness, an impulse to overcome all

otherness...Hegel expressed this by saying that self consciousness is ‘desire’”16

Desire is the way that is the first expression or externalization of man himself to

the outside of him. Before making something concrete in the external world he

expresses himself by the desire. In this way, rationalization process of the

consciousness starts with desire. “Hegel’s argument begins with his view of

human beings as spiritual beings, whose ‘fundamental’ desires include the desire

to establish their self-worth through self-positing and self-interpretation.”17

In this acquisition of self-knowledge or within this dialectical process of

experience, Wood suggests five thesis on Hegel’s rational construction of process:

i) selfhood involves the desire for self-certainty, ii) self-certainty requires

recognition, iii) one-sided recognition cannot succeed, iv) mutual recognition

requires universal self-consciousness, v) recognition through universal

15 Wood, Allen, Hegel’s Ethical Thought, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1990, p.33. 16 Hegel, G.W.F., The Phenomenology of Spirit, tr.by Miller, A.V., Oxford University Press,

Oxford, 1979, §174. 17 Wood, ibid., p.90.

17

consciousness requires a community of persons, standing in mutual relations of

abstract right.18 In this schema, I begin with ‘desire’ and try to analyze

socialization process of the self.

There is an explicit discussion of desire in The Phenomenology of Spirit’s

beginning section of the second chapter “The Truth of Self-Certainty”19, which

introduces the transition between consciousness and self-consciousness. This

section contains the transition to externalization and alterity that is a discussion of

the origins of self-consciousness. For Hegel, dialectical and evolutionary process

of consciousness, at first, has three levels: i) ‘sense-certainty’, ii) ‘perception’, iii)

‘understanding’.

In Section A on Consciousness Hegel explores three relations of conscious subjectivity to its object: the ‘Sense-certainty’ which merely confronts an object in what seems to be its rich individuality without making anything definite to it, Perception where it begins to distinguish properties or qualities in the immediately given, but is unable to integrate them in the unity of the perceived thing, and finally the Understanding, where the natures of the things are seen as fixed patterns of mutual interference and interaction behind their manifest, phenomenal surface.20

The phenomenological ‘voyage of discovery’ starts with the ‘immediate’

knowledge, in the section of The Phenomenology called “Sense-Certainty: Or the

‘This’ and ‘Meaning’” (Die sinnliche Gewissheit oder das Diese und das Meinen),

which is not to be taken as ‘conceptual object’ and we should not add anything

else to nor change on it other than its simplicity. Consciousness, at the same time,

18 Ibid., p.90. 19 Hegel, G.W.F., ibid., §§166-177. 20 Findlay, J.N., “Foreword and Analysis”, in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, tr.by A.M. Miller,

Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1977, p.xv.

18

lacks of any content and does not make any relationship with its object; it takes its

object merely in an immediate way. This ‘I’ limits its activity with this

‘immediateness’, that is to say, with this immediate content.

For Hegel, sense-consciousness, the starting point of our knowledge and

experience makes sense-consciousness possible, is infinitely ‘rich’,

...both in the sense that we keep on extending its range and in the sense that we can go farther and deeper into something that we have experienced already. But all we can ever ‘say’ at the level of immediate awareness is: ‘This is’ and ‘This is what I am aware of.’...what emerges as ‘true being’ is not what immediately is at all, but the universal mediating and mediated system of what ‘essentially’ is, in the ‘here and now’ of the mind and its universal language, the here and now that is ‘always’. The truth of immediate being is ‘essence’ and essence is what is ‘perceived’ by the mind, not what is given immediately to the senses.21

At the level of sense-experience, object of consciousness is not truth, because the

truth of it is ‘universal’. On the contrary, what consciousness wants to take is

‘here’ and ‘now’ as a universal. Every object is shown to sense-consciousness in

the form of ‘here’ and ‘now’. It (sense-consciousness), which takes the object

within these forms, does not have its identity and difference.

Only in the stage of “Perception: Or the Thing and Deception” (Die

Wahrnehmung oder das Ding und die Täuschung), we can talk about this identity

and difference for consciousness. Perception contains, in its very essence, negation

and difference or manifoldness. What I intend to explain by this difference is that

the object of perception appears in the form of a property. The object is an

association of universals, such as whiteness, coldness, etc.

21 Harris, H.S., Hegel: Phenomenology and System, Hackett Pub.Co., Indianapolis, 1995, pp.24-25.

19

At the level of sense-certainty, we use our language, but we ‘never’ follow its ‘leading’ towards the mental realm of ‘universal’ concepts. When we become conscious ‘perceivers’, we have accepted that leading. We are no longer interested in what singular Things there are, but in what ‘kinds of thing’ there are; and our philosophical questions is ‘What does it ‘mean’ to be a kind of thing?’22

Sense-experience presented us all the transient impressions of sense and for now

they all become the ‘properties’ of the things. This argument implies that while

manifoldness of sense-content is different and changable from one moment to

another in sense-experience, here, in the stage of ‘perception’, the thing is a

conceptual unity of many of these properties. The object having a collection of

properties, that is to say, its unity comparing to manifoldness is presented by the

intellectual activity of consciousness. Here also, as in sense-consciousness,

cosciousness is dependent to its object, but, on the contrary, I apprehend the object

as a community of powers that affect my senses. Consciousness conceives the

thing, the object as ‘one’; but the thing is perceived as the variety of properties,

because it affects the bodily part of the subject. Conscious ‘I’, for now, is the

universal medium within which all sense-properties of the thing are harmonized

and come together. Hence, by seeing that determinateness of being a universal

medium is our thinking, we keep the self-identity and the truth of the thing, i.e.,

being ‘one’.

When the object is asserted as a ‘one’, manifoldness of the properties of object can

be seen not in relation to consciousness, but in relation to other object(s). This

thing is ‘being-in-itself’; as essential to its character, it is in-itself and, at the same

22 Ibid., p.25.

20

time, being-for-itself. This expresses that it exists by means of relating with

something else, or, other object. Relationship is the negation of the independence

character of object.

...The world no longer consists of singular things, each of which has its own essence...The Understanding (Verstand) ‘posits’ (or presupposes) the independence (the self-sufficient completeness) of its object ‘absolutely’. What happens for us can be made conscious for it too, but only as a subjective experience of ‘what truly is’.23

This is the new shape of consciousness, namely, ‘Understanding’.

Understanding conceives the necessary relations ‘between’ things, and this

‘between’ cannot be discerned by the activity of perception. It [Understanding]

grasps the ‘Life’ within which the relationship of singular things is appeared in

variety of forms.

The perceptual thing and its properties became for us an intelligible form in which many ‘matters’ were united, and in order to understand how ‘that’ could be manifested ‘as’ perception, we had to move to the concept of a unitary world of the necessary relations ‘between’ things.24

For Hegel, general character of consciousness, in all those three stages, is that

knowledge is the knowledge of the object. Activity of the consciousness is

determined by its object, not precisely by itself. Hence, this activity of thinking is

contemplation, object-dependent in character.

“At each of these stages, though they are different, he [Hegel] argues,

consciousness loses itself in that which it is consciousness of. It is absorbed in and

23 Ibid., pp.27-8. 24 Ibid., p.29.

21

by the objects of its experience and fails to distinguish itself from them.”25

Understanding takes its object related to other objects and grasps the Life as an

infinite. But, at the same time, it cannot realize that all the distinctions within life

are only “the internal manoeuvres of its own self-consciousness

[Selbstbewusstsein]”26 and “...dialectic that arises in the midst of externality

transposes itself to the interior of self-consciousness itself.”27 This step, in the

problem of the objectivity of knowledge, is essentially completed as the transition

from consciousness to self-consciousness which takes place with

the necessary advance from the previous shapes of consciousness for which their truth was a Thing, an ‘other’ than themselves, expresses just this, that not only is consciousness of a thing possible only for a self-consciousness, but that self-consciousness alone is the truth of those shapes. But it is only for us that this truth exists, not yet for consciousness.28

Self-consciousness is, indeed, a ‘reflection’ from the existence of sensuous and

perceived world and is return into itself starting from being-other. In this view,

self-consciousness confronts with two things that, at first, it conceives the

manifoldness of singular things in the sensuous-world, and, secondly, it carries the

notion of this manifoldness, that is to say, unity, within itself. Self-consciousness

is a stage for consciousness, in the process of knowledge of science, which will

necessarily overcome the conflict of unity and plurality. At the stage of self-

consciousness, our object become now a conscious Ego.

25 Crossley, N., Intersubjectivity: The Fabric of Social Becoming, Sage Publications, London, 1996, p.17.

26 Findlay, J.N., ibid., p.518. 27 Hyppolite, J., Genesis and Structure of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, tr.by Samuel Cherniak

and John Heckman, Northwestern University Press,Evanston, 1974, p.67. 28 Hegel, G.W.F., ibid., §164.

22

Consciousness was knowledge of an other, this other was the sensuous world that

the knowledge of this sensuous world is the knowledge of consciousness. But,

unlike the knowledge of consciousness, that of self-consciousness is the ‘self’ and

“The I is the content of the relation and the very moment of relating. At the same

time, it is the I that opposes itself to an other and exceeds that other, and other that

for it is only itself.”29

The dependency of subject upon the object is slightly altered at the very beginning

of self-consciousness, namely, by ‘desire’. Subject, in Hegel’s view, represents the

truth of the object and also the antithesis of this truth, namely, ‘difference’ or

manifoldness of the sensuous world.

This antithesis of its appearance and its truth has, however, for its essence only the truth, viz. the unity of self-cosciousness with itself; this unity must be essential to self-consciousness, i.e. self-consciousness is Desire [Begierde] in general.30

The most important question here is that why ‘Desire’ is the pathway for the unity

of self-consciousness? Answer can easily come to appear that only in the form of

desire, consciousness can overcome the otherness of the object which is alien to

itself.

In the same case with Fichte, Hegel also argues that ‘desire’ is at the base of any

theoretical or practical activity. Fichte was using the term ‘impulse’ (Trieb), for

the base of any theoretical or practical activity. Similar to Fichte’s ‘impulse’,

29 Ibid., §134. 30 Ibid., §167.

23

Hegel prefers to call it ‘desire’ (Begierde). I think the reason why he prefers this

term will be clear in the discussion between human desire and animal desire.

The ‘experience of lack’ is the first step in analyzing desire and its transformative

power. By the experience of lack, consciousness becomes aware of the necessity to

satisfy his ‘hunger’ , ‘poverty’, ‘sheltering’, etc. They all satisfy his bodily part,

that is to say, his animal desire. But he is indeed more than sensory self. He can

never be satisfied on the level of appetite, because, in his development from

consciousness to self-consciousness, he had learnt the concept of ‘infinity’ or

‘permenancy’ beyond the relationships of objects so that he conceives the

character of animal desire without having any permanency and its insufficiency in

character.

“Desire is this movement of consciousness that does not respect being that negates

it, appropriating it concretely and making it its own. Desire presupposes the

phenomenal character of the world that exists for the self only as a means.”31

Desire, in this respect, does have a ‘destructive’ character. The Life is a scene in

which man and his sensuous world are in struggle with each other, and, for every

aspects of the negative character of man himself the things of the world have

disappeared. Hence, the self cannot find itself within this world as a totality of

disapperances.

Different from the Cartesian conception of the monological ‘I’, “self-

consciousness then is not ‘the inert tautology, I=I’; it presents itself as engaged in a

31 Hyppolite, J., p.69.

24

debate with the world. For self-consciousness, this world is what dissappears and

does not subsist, but this very dissappearance is necessary for self-consciousness

to pose itself. Self-consciousness, therefore, is ‘desire’, in the most general

meaning of the word.”32

The very essence of consciousness is the ‘negativity’. It negates everything in the

world as otherness. By means of this activity, it consumes everything and makes

them his property to be satisfied. But, this is not enough for the self to be fully

satisfied. Desire cannot be ended or satisfied by the object which is not ‘infinite’ in

character. What desire makes on earth is only the ‘negative freedom of

consumption and this makes desire be “...bondage to the needs of finite life. In

order to be free, the living self needs another ‘consciousness’ that can stand

between it and its instinctual drives.”33 Only by this activity, desiring experience

will overcome the subject and object distinction and reach the truth of itself.

Standing in the endless intentionality to the animal desire by supposing it as the

true object of itself, he cannot be satisfied any more. The new object of

consciousness should be a one that rescues it from the dependency of it to the

external being.

“...Ordinary desires are not sufficient to explain full self-consciousness according

to Hegel. All animals have these desires, he notes, but not all animals are self-

conscious.”34 Hegel, in this aspect of the process of self-consciousness,

32 Ibid., p.70. 33 Harris, ibid., p.36. 34 Crossley, p.17.

25

distinguishes between animal desire and human desire. By this aspect of the

process, he explains the unique character of man to be conscious of himself.

Only the human species is capable of full self-consciousness in Hegel’s schema and this is explained by a desire that is peculiar to human beings alone: the desire for desire or rather the desire to be desired, the desire for recognition. Human desires to be recognised as consciousness, for Hegel. Moreover, such recognition is required if consciousness is to achieve full self-consciousness. Only through the mediation of the consciousness of the other can consciousness turn back upon itself and identify itself.35

Hence, self-consciousness is an ‘intersubjective’ phenomenon, achievable only

through mutual recognition among self-consciousnesses. Because only this mutual

recognition brings the true and actual freedom to the self-consciousnesses.

A self-consciousness exists for a self-consciousness. Only so is it in fact self-consciousness; for only in this way does the unity of itself in its otherness become explicit for it. The ‘I’ which is the object of its Notion is in fact not ‘object’; the object of Desire, however, is only independent, for it is indestructable substance, the fluid self-identical essence. A self-consciousness, in being an object, is just as much ‘I’ as ‘object’. With this, we already have before us the Notion of ‘Spirit’. What still lies ahead for consciousness is the experience of what Spirit is –this absolute substance which is the unity of the different independent self-consciousness which, in their opposition, enjoy perfect freedom and independence: ‘I’ is that is ‘We’ and ‘We’ that is ‘I’.36

Hegel is aware of the fact that mere biological existence is not the deepest motive

of human behaviour. The deepest motive of human being is to find the adequate

conception of the ‘free self’ in his object which external things cannot provide.

Only the thing that can provide self-consciousness, the sense of its own freedom is

other self-consciousness. In order to attain its own freedom, self-consciousness

35 Ibid., p.17. 36 Hegel, ibid., §177.

26

must come ‘outside itself’, and its object becomes another self. “Self-

consciousness is in and for itself insofar and through the fact that it is in and for

itself for another,...it is only as something recognized”37.

At the crucial turning point of The Phenomenology, he interpretes the deepest

drive as the uniquely human desire for ‘recognition’. Only if there is an another

consciousness I can completely know what I am and what I want to be. Self-

consciousness comes out of itself and encounters with another consciousness.

Since it does not admit, at first, that the other is an essential self like itself, self

wants to supersede the other. So, it seems that consciousness returns into itself

through overcoming the otherness and completes the truth of itself, in other words,

becomes equal to itself. In the following passage of the The Phenomenology,

Hegel expresses the ethico-social meaning of interrelationship between two

consciousness:

Now, this movement of self-consciousness in relation to another self-consciousness has in this way been represented as the action of one self-consciousness, but this action of the one has itself the double significance of being both its own action and the action of the other as well. For the other is equally independent and self-contained, and there is nothing in it of which it is not itself the origin...Each sees the other do the same as it does; each does itself what it demands of the other, and therefore also does what it does only so far as the other does the same. Action by one side only would be useless because what is to happen can only be brought about by both.38

In this very crucial point in The Phenomenology, I think that in order to say an

action as ‘ethical’, it should be at least performed by two parties, that is to say,

37 Hegel, ibid., §178. 38 Ibid., §182.

27

action should be directed to one person by the other. Hegel, by explicating

twofoldness of ethical action –because he talks about the meaning of the action-

passes beyond the fictious character of the monological subject and his action to

the idea of dialogical one. At the same time, he uncovers the close connection

between desire and moral action by superseding any dualism which is brought by

the mentalist tradition claiming that ‘moral action’ is followed only by reason in

distinction to any desire, inclination, etc. In The Phenomenology, that ‘ought to be’

as a ‘telos’ is explained through the actions of human beings and this telos is not

postulated merely by one actor isolating itself from anything external. “Thus the

action has a double significance not only because it is directed against itself as

well as against the other, but also because it is indivisibly the action of one as well

as of the other.”39

Since the individual object of desire is not an object posed in independence and its

truth is consumed and negated, the self directs his attention to what is independent.

This is his desire itself. “Indeed, the essence of desire is an other than self-

consciousness, and this truth becomes present to self-consciousness through the

experience of the succession of desires”40

Since self-consciousness is ‘being-for-itself’ and its distinctive character is to

negate otherness to be satisfied, the object becomes ‘another desire’ in this case.

He desires for the desire. This is why he gets the truth of itself through another

39 Ibid., §183. 40 Ibid., §175.

28

desire. In other words, in order to get truth of itself self-consciousness directs itself

into another self-consciousness.

Desire bears first on the objects of the world, then on life, an object already closer to itself, and, finally, on another self-consciousness. Desire seeks itself in the other: man desires recognition from man.41

The self-consciousness comes out of itself by means of the encounter with another

self-consciousness. It is alienated from itself and experiences itself as an object of

another self-consciousness. In this stage, it does not recognize other as an essential

being like itself. Thus, it will try to negate and overcome other in order to return

into itself by providing the self-certainty of itself. Because, only if the object of the

self, that is to say the other appears to the self as another desire, self can jump from

the subjective stage of certainty to the objective.

The mediation through another self-consciousness has the struggle between two

parties. Medium between man and another man, man and nature, or individual and

society is conflicting in character. There might not be confirmative relations within

society at the beginning. The ethical relations will exist later in the history of

human being. For the time being, history and all the historical events should be

understood as the history of struggle among the men or among the peoples.

In the first encounter of the selves, ‘recognition’, in Hegel’s sense, is not positive

in character. Because, as I have already expressed that each self does not admit

that other is an essential being like itself, the self supposes that only true being is

itself. The desire for recognition is expressed in the first instance in a ‘fight to the

41 Hyppolite, ibid., p.71.

29

death’. Each self-consciousness, in this fight, will show and prove to the other, that

is ‘desiring’ and ‘living’ being, its ‘absolute self-certainty’ and ‘true being’. We,

as a phenomenological observer, can say that each self can find its truth only

through having itself recognized by the other.

In the fight for recognition, self, in order to obtain the truth of self-certainty, must

risk his life and go up to the stage which is above the animal desire for self-

preservation. This is the struggle for life and death. They should get into this life

and death struggle. Because only by means of this, they prove to each other, also

to themselves, the true certainty of themselves or being-for-themselves and they

can rise this certainty up to the objective reality. This ‘objective reality’ is the

achievement of ‘freedom’. The problem of ‘recognition’ is very much related to

the problem of freedom which is the main argument of my thesis.

For the principle of recognition, each part should both be alive at the end of the

this fight. Because, the principle requires recognition ‘mutually’ for each self. If

one is killed by the other, one that is alive cannot be recognized by anyone else.

Thus, one who can risk his life and rise above the mere instinctual existence, that

is to say, self-preservation becomes master/lord and the one who cannot risk his

life becomes a slave/bondage/servitude of the previous.42 Slave, in this fight, who

faced his own death at the hand of the other, could not have the courage to give up

his animal desire, that is to say, self-preservation and remains as a mere self-

consciousness in the world. Hence, slave renounces his claim to be recognized and

42 It is true that risking life is to need for the confirmation of freedom. Freedom is only attained

through the ‘life-experience’ and this means that freedom can be possible only by considering action and contemplation together.

30

will be subjected to the service of master. The master is ‘recognized’ by the slave

who admits him as an essential being, that is to say, master is the essence of slave.

This is the relation of ‘Master and Slave’ (Herrschaft und Knechtschaft) which

leads to very important discussions especially in ethics and political philosophy

under the title of multiculturalism, ethics of recognition, Marxist philosophy, etc.

The slave who is insufficient self-consciousness recognizes master. His essence is

the life, that is to say, other to itself or being-for-another. This being-for-another

expresses in his relation with the master: an external relation through external

thing in a kind of work without satisfaction, while, master gets enjoyment without

laboring43. Nevertheless, this master has its own recognition only in appearance,

because it does not recognize the other.44 So, the achievement of the master is, at

first, free from any bodily work. But it [achievement] is the opposite of what the

principle of recognition requires from each self, i.e., ‘mutual recognition’. The

master is recognized by the slave and not vice versa.

In this recognition the unessential consciousness is for the lord the object, which constitutes the truth of his certainty of himself. But it is clear that this object does not correspond to its notion, but rather that the object in which the lord has achieved his lordships has in reality turned out to be something quite different from an independent consciousness.What now really confronts him is not an independent consciousness, but a dependent one. He is, therefore, not certain of being-for-itself as the truth of himself. On the contrary, his truth in reality the unessential consciousness and its unessential action.45

43 Hegel, G.W.F., ibid., §190. 44 Ibid.§189. 45 Ibid., §192.

31

The master achieves his self-sufficiency through the recognition of the slave who

is not recognized yet by the master. Because of this reason, to be recognized by a

slave is to a slavish consciousness, not full self-consciousness or it is, in essence,

unworthy. Thus, the master standing at the exploitation position against the slave

is/cannot be truly free, because he does not thoroughly look on himself in the

other. Consequently, it is only through the liberation of the slave that the master,

too, becomes perfectly free. Because the telos of this dialectic is to see the true

self-certainty of itself on otherness, other self-consciousness.

On the other side, the slave transfers his desire to do something on the earth and

transforms the things. In this way, he brings the power of negation and uses it on

external things by work for the master. For the slave, work is “desire held in

check, fleetingness staved of (…) work forms and shapes the thing.”46

Consequently, “the truth of the independent consciousness is accordingly the

servile consciousness of the bondsman,”47 “as a consciousness forced back into

itself, it will withdraw into itself and be transformed into a truly independent

consciousness”48. We can be here sure that work is the power of transformation for

the achievement of the knowledge of object. Work provides for the slave to be

‘independent consciousness’. Because work provides for the slave mastery over

nature and over what is done. The slave knows during the activity what he can do

or cannot do. The thing done at the end of this process is outside of his labour. So,

by means of this, he can externalize what potential is within himself. Thus, he is

46 Ibid., § 195. 47 Ibid., .§193. 48 Ibid.

32

free from the thing or being ‘thing-like’. By satisfying, at next level, the needs of

himself as well as that of master he transcends also animal desire which he could

not do in the life and death struggle. Work provides him the externalization of

human consciousness. Through work man overcomes the alienation between

subjective world and objective world, then transforms the nature into the an

available instrument for his self-development. The subject is able to know himself

in different faces of the object.

The bondsman overcomes the otherness and mere existence of material thinghood more throughly than the lord, and so achieves a more genuine self-consciousness. The bondsman...also rises above the quaking fear which was his first reaction to absolute otherness as embodied in the lord. Then he achieved self-consciousness in opposition to such otherness, now he achieves a self-consciousness not opposed to otherness, but which discovers itself in otherness. In shaping the thing creatively, he becomes aware of his boundless originality.49

In other words, in the product of his work, behind the curtain, slave finds his own

power, i.e., he finds himself. This is permanent in character and not transitory. The

slave faces to face with the concept of ‘infinite’ beyond the finite character of his

work.

According to Hegel, in this process of self-development, there should be certain

requirements to raise the slave’s self-consciousness to genuine independence. One

of them is ‘fear to death’ by master. Because of this fear to death, slave is

subjected to the obedience of the master. Secondly, by means of the service he

satisfies the needs of master. Finally, the labour transforms servititude into

49 Findlay, J.N., Analysis, p.522.

33

mastery. These three things are essential for a slave to be independent self-

consciousness.

Servitude to an alien will makes possible the disciplining of particular whims and desires, so that they may be brought under the sway of one’s rational or universal will. ‘This subjection of the servant’s selfishness from the beginning of true human freedom, (…) a necessary moment in the formative education (Bildung) of every human being.50

According to Hegel, discipline, service and labor prepare together to the way for

self-consciousness, but they are not, at all, freedom of self-consciousness.

Beyond the limitation of service, discipline and labor, freedom is attained only

respecting equally the freedom of others so that other is admitted as a universal

self-consciousness. And the foundation of it is the mutual recognition

characteristics of which I tried to explain above.

Universal self-consciousness is the affirmative knowing of oneself in another self (…) it knows itself as recognized in the free other, and knows this other insofar as it recognizes it and knows it as free51

Finally, when the slave becomes fully aware of his self-conscious freedom after

the transformation of the world, he might cease to be an thing-like, that is to say

being an object or being a slave. At next stage, the slave is able to encounter with

his master through possesing the self-certainty of himself. On the contrary, the

master is represented as the tautology I=I, according to Hyppolite, ‘immediate

abstract self-consciousness’. He cannot conceive the true power of mediation, that

is to say, life and work. He could have been ‘true independent self-consciousness’

50 Wood, Allen, Hegel’s Ethical Thought, p. 88. 51 Hegel, G.W.F., Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, §436.

34

only by means of this mediation. Finally, both two self-consciousnesses attain

affirmation of true freedom if and only if each see the other as an independent self-

consciousness and, at the same time, his own freedom in the other.52 This can be

true when the actors come into an ‘ethical life’ (Sittlichkeit) within which universal

self-consciousnesses get their true essence that is the meaning of life, namely,

‘freedom’. Universal self-consciousness is “the form of consciousness of the

substance of every essential spirituality, whether of family, fatherland, state, or of

all virtues –love, friendship, courage, honor, fame.”53 While the concept of

freedom, according to Hegel, is the logical beginning of all the human institutions,

dialectic of master and slave pertains to “the transition from the natural state of

humanity to the truly ethical condition.”54 Ethical life is the life-world

(Lebenswelt), built up by the action and consciousness of individual, in which

every subject recognizes and promotes active universality in every subject, where

all men equally recognize and co-operate with one another. Hence, ‘recognition’

implies ‘freedom’, it leads man knowing himself ‘free’ and this freedom can only

be achieved within ‘ethical life’. Self is only ‘free self’ if and only if the other also

becomes ‘free’ and is recognized by the self.

52 Similarly Schutz for example insists that, “I experience myself through my consociate, and he

experiences himself through me” in what he refers to as a “reciprocal mirroring.” (Schutz, Alfred The Structures of the Life-World, tr.by R.Zaner & T.Engelehardt Jr., Heinemann, London, 1974, p.67.)

53 Ibid., §436 A. 54 Hegel, G.W.F., Elements of the Philosophy of Right, tr.by H.B.Nisbet, Cambridge University

Press, Cambridge,1992, §57A.

35

2.4. Subjectivity Revisited

In the line from Kant to post-Kantian philosophy, namely, transcendental

philosophy, philosophers regarded self-consciousness as the ‘highest principle’ of

their philosophical systems. Kant and Fichte, for example, claimed that primary

knowledge is for us without doubt the knowledge of ourselves, or ‘self-

knowledge’. In this view, ‘knowing subject’ or ‘consciousness’ has become the

centre of philosophy. Hegel, however, attempted to work through and beyond the

philosophy of consciousness. He distinquished between consciousness, which

involved a relation to an object, and self-consciousness which involved the relation

between a subject and another self-consciousness. He criticised Kant and Fichte

for neglecting consciousness and self-consciousness, arguing that this led to the

positing of an unknowable and yet sovereign self-consciousness which self-

consciousness was discovered through the ‘recognition’ of another self-

consciousness.

Social institution of mastery and slavery points to the process of socialization and

to the conflict that all societal structures have had in the history. So, history can be

considered as an interplay of conflicting parts or individuations. Like individual,

society is also made up of continuation and discontinuation. The struggle for

recognition and the subjection to master are appearances of which all the social life

of man arises.

Hegel examines this conflict in the relation of man and society so that he makes

the relation of man with himself to be externalized, in other words, beyond

himself. In this activity of ‘detranscendalization’ and ‘reconstructing’ of ego, the

36

concept of ‘experience’ and its very important role in community came out to the

daylight. All I would like to explain with this story of man’s experience is that we

cannot conceive ‘ego’ without talking about its environment which, especially,

include conflictual character in essence. Hegel exhibits the very core role of

struggle for being an essential ground of any societal structure and it results from

self-development and the ‘necessary advance’ of socialization process.

Main argument of the thesis is that the ‘source of the ego, of subject, of

consciousness, or of whatever we say, cannot be reduced into the ‘monological

dialogue’ of man with himself. Although Descartesian and Kantian conception of

subject or ego refers to the ‘abstract ego’, Hegel’s ego, however, in The

Phenomenology, can express itself only in relation with other ego(s). This

relationship takes us to the concept of ‘intersubjectivity’ that contemporary

thinker, Habermas, in his early works, emphasizes on this concept and tries to

show its importance. He finds this concept in Hegel’s Jena Manuscripts and

seperates this early work from The Phenomenology of Spirit. This difference, we

cannot here mention, can be a subject of another study.

‘Intersubjectivity’ gives a meaning to socialization process of man himself by

considering several forms, such as ‘language’ and ‘work’, to mediate between

individual and society, subject and object, man and nature. These forms are the

forms of intersubjectivity and through them man expresses himself out of himself,

namely, in ‘life-world’ (Lebenswelt). Self and his individuality are being

universalized such as in the form of labour or in the form of symbols and all these

universalized things are shared in culture and are transmitted from one culture to

37

another. Hegel, in this sense, was searching for these universals and trying to relate

all them to each other in the history. Because of this reason, The Phenomenology

of Spirit expresses an endeavour to make a paralellism between ‘logical necessity’

and ‘historical experience’. In this great work, ‘historical contingency’ and ‘logical

necessity’ are brought together. I think that it is not problem of Hegel’s

philosophy, because any philosophy that wants to be a philosophy of history

should rise itself above mere historical events. This is the point that seperates

between a historician who thinks of historical events and a philosopher who

speculates history in general. Latter requires the universals which are needed to

explain the true essence of the events.

In The Phenomenology of Spirit, the central concept of ‘Spirit’ (Geist) first

emerges as the result of reciprocal recognition. Hegel uses the term ‘Spirit’ for the

media of language, work and mutual recognition. Hence, how language and work

mediate between the knowing and acting subject and its objects should, therefore,

be interpreted in terms of ‘sharing’ traditions and ‘joining’ in a common life. The

epistemological problem of overcoming the mentalist gap would then be solved by

an assimilation of subject-object relations to intersubjective relations. In the move

from consciousness to self-consciousness in the Phenomenology, subjectivity and

theory get taken up into the larger context of intersubjectivity and practice. In this

connection, it is in and as the community of reciprocal recognition that Spirit

emerges as ‘absolute’ and ‘absolutely knowing’ becomes a possibility. Spirit is the

‘I’ that is ‘We’ and the ‘We’ that is ‘I’, since the ‘I’ apart from the ‘We’ is only an

38

abstraction55, which philosophy must treat as such. It is individual thought isolated

from its social context and, as such, it is thought isolated from the practice in

which it is embedded. It is here significant that ‘Geist’ originates in recognition,

for this suggests that Geist is a fundamentally social concept. If Geist has its

genesis in intersubjective recognition, then Geist is not an example of

transcendental philosophy but instead its transformation.56

As we mentioned before, Hegel uses the general term ‘Geist’ for the media of

language, work and mutual recognition. Language and labour are forms of

expression in which the individual no longer contains and possesses himself within

himself, but allows the inward to become completely external, and surrenders it to

the other. The internal is externalized in a symbolic medium that streches beyond

the boundries of subjectivity. In the spoken word and in the performed action there

remains no opposition between inside and outside. The individual character of

communicating and interacting persons is mirrored in the specific features of the

social practices and cultural forms they share with others.57

Contemporary thinkers, like Habermas, use different forms of ‘Lebenswelt’ in

indicating the social practices in various ways. Habermas undermines philosophy

of consciousness by giving importance language which provides the mediation

between the man and social world. Only with the appearance of language, and

within language, do consciousness and the being of nature begin to seperate for

55 This is the Kantian philosophy which prevents the passage from one consciousness to the

another. 56 Williams,R.R., Recognition: Fichte and Hegel on The Other, State University of New York

Press, Albany, 1992, p.159. 57 Habermas,J., From Kant to Hegel and Back Again, p.143.

39

consciousness. By means of symbols, speaking consciousness becomes objective

for itself and in them experiences itself as a subject.58

Just as language breaks the dictates of immediate perception and orders the chaos

of the manifold impressions into identifiable things, so labor breaks the dictates of

immediate desires and arrests the process of drive satisfaction. Like symbols in

language, here the instruments, in which the laborer’s experience of his objects is

deposited, form the existing middle. Herbert Marcuse and Alexandre Kojève, from

another point of view, emphasize the great role of ‘work’ in building up of

socialization. According to Marcuse, ‘objectivations of life’ are the product of the

activity of living and self-conscious being. Here, we should think of both concept

of historical actuality and objectivations of life together. In this sense, The

Phenomenology of Spirit can be described as the ‘intersubjective constitution of a

shared world’, a social world of objects as well as of actions. This must be a world

that individuals can recognize as their own ‘work’, and in so doing recognize

themselves in this world.59

Work is always the work of a specific individual that realizes itself through it.

Every individual thereby places in the ‘space of being’ its own determinate work.

For every other individual, however, this is ‘alien’ and must be sublated

(aufgehoben) through transformative action. It then follows that every individual

must defend and prove itself against all others. The work thereby becomes an

object of struggle in the reciprocal oppositions of individuals. The resolution of the

58 Habermas,J., Theory and Practice, tr.by John Viertel, Beacon Press, Boston,1973, p.164-165. 59 Marcuse,H., Hegel’s Ontology and the Theory of Historicity, tr.by Seyla Benhabib, MIT Press,

Cambridge, Mass., 1987, p.xxvii.

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‘work’ and ‘recognition’ appears because only in this process both the object of

work and the subject are transformed. By a series of successive totalizations, the

object of work no longer refers to a single thing but rather to a context of relations,

an objective reality formed by cumulative human activity and the cumulative

product of such activities. Paralleling this transition from ‘object to objectivity’,

from ‘thing to world’, activity also loses its individualistic character and comes to

stand not for individual deeds but for the doings and accomplishments of a whole

people, of a plural rather than singular subject. About Hegelian philosophy

Marcuse says that no where in Western Philosophy since the Greeks have life and

its activity and the world of life as work and pragma been placed at the centre of

ontology.60

Both Marcuse and Kojève indicate that ‘philosophy of praxis’ first appeared from

Hegelian philosophy in general, and his philosophy formed a bridge between

‘doing’ and ‘thinking’. All contemporary minds which are willing to disagree with

‘subject-dependent’ thinking should refer back to Hegel’s ‘detranscendentalized’

philosophy.

Hegel’s credit, according to Habermas, is that he discovered the epistemological

relevance of language and work. He uncovered in them the ‘Spirit’ that mediates

the knowing subject with its objects in ways that undercut any dualistic

description.61 Wherever man has impressed his design on things, he can certainly

be recognized in his tools and structures. It is precisely in interpersonal relations

60 Ibid. 61 Habermas, J., From Kant to Hegel and Back Again, p.17.

41

that people open themselves up to the kind of intimacy that does not allow me to

experience the other as another, but rather as an intensification, extension, and

restoration of my own particular being, or even as breaking my self-willed

obstinacy, and so helping me learn to recognize what is real.62

We may easily see that language is seen, in Hegel’s view, not just as a set of signs,

but as the medium of expression of a certain way of seeing and experiencing.

Hence, there can not be thought without language; and indeed, the languages of

different people reflect their different visions of things. Hence, this theory of

expression is also anti-dualistic. There is no thought without language, art, gesture

or some external medium. And thought is inseperable from its medium, not just in

the sense that the former could not be without the latter, but also in that thought is

shaped by its medium. That is, what from one point of view might be described as

the same thoughts are altered, given a new twist, in being expressed in a new

medium, for instance translated from one language to another. To put the point in

another way, we cannot clearly distinguish the content of a thought from what is

‘added’ by the medium.63

After uncovering what the concept of intersubjectivity and its form are related to

our concern here, from another point of view, I must explain that, according to

Hegel, history of human world does not begin with the struggle between the

individual and nature, since the individual is really a later product in human

62 Gadamer,H.G., Praise of Theory, tr.by Chris Dowson, Yale University Press, New Haven,1998,

pp.10-11. 63 Taylor,C., Hegel and Modern Society, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, New York,

pp.17-18.

42

history. The community (Allgemeinheit) comes first, although in a ready-made,

‘immediate’ form. It is as yet not a rational community and does not have freedom

as its quality. Consequently, it soon splits up into numerous antagonisms.

Fundamental to Hegel’s theory was the principle of embodiment. ‘Subjectivity’ was necessarily situated in life, in nature, and in a setting of social practices and institutions. Hegel saw language and symbols as vehicles of awareness, and he saw different vehicles corresponding to different levels in the various stages of art, religion and philosophy...Most important of all, the contemporary attempt to go beyond to the dilemma, namely to situate subjectivity by relating it to our life as embodied and social beings, without reducing it to a function of objectified nature, constantly refers us back to Hegel. In a sense the modern search for a situated subjectivity is the heir of that central aspiration of how to unite radical autonomy with the fullness of expressive unity with nature.64

As a result of all I have mentioned, it might be unavoidably said that

Hegel’s writings provides one of the most profound and far-reaching attempts to work out a vision of embodied subjectivity, of thought and freedom emerging from the stream of life, finding expression in the forms of social existence, and discovering themselves in relation to nature and history.65

Thus since Hegel the idea that all the human societies are founded in life and death

struggle has become a starting point for some thinkers. By means of this idea,

paradigms are shifted in social and political theory by attaching importance to the

very core role of the political and economics institutions within which struggle for

recognition exists and self-fullfilment of the individuals is realized. All historical

phenomena participate more or less in the dialectical structure of various networks

of mutual recognition, within which persons become individuated through

64 Ibid, pp.164-7. 65 Ibid, p.168.

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‘socialization’. Hence, Hegel was the first person to recognize ‘intersubjectivity’

as the core of subjectivity.

Hegel’s wholistic critique of the transcendental ego of traditional philosophy from

Descartes through Kant and Fichte is the point of departure in the history of

philosophy. This ego can be a foundation for knowledge only because it has been

radically desituated. The enormous difference between traditional philosophy and

Hegelian philosophy has often been brought out with the statement that Hegel

replaced the formal (contemplative) character of traditional philosophy with the

philosophy that includes the categories and modes of thought derived from the

process of reality, that is to say, from the movement of being.

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CHAPTER III

FREEDOM

In this chapter, I will compare the ‘moral philosophy’ of Kant with Hegelian

‘ethics’ for considering the concept of freedom. In fact, Hegel develops his

political philosophy in the light of the critiques of Kant’s moral philosophy.

According to Hegel, what ethical is cannot be considered without what political is.

Ethics and political philosophy are combined in his philosophy. As in The

Phenomenology of Spirit, the main emphasis of him is on the concepts of freedom

and history, he also concentrates, in his Philosophy of Right, on these concepts and

realization of freedom in the ethico-social structure of modern culture and life.

The problem of Hegel is to combine ancient Greek’s ‘virtue’ ethics, which is

dependent upon action in the city-state, with Kantian ‘free self’ which is normative

in character. The reconciliation of these two poles will provide the subjective

aspect of the action to have an objective meaning. The person will be able to

overcome the gap between his subjectivity and the objectivity which was alien to

himself.

Hegel’s treatment was to overcome any abstract formalism of Kantian moral

philosophy by the help of Plato’s and Aristotle’s ethico-social philosophies.

Contemporary thinker, Gadamer, tries, in his short but very influential work,

45

Aristotle and the Categorical Imperative, to find paralellism between the

Aristotle’s concept of ‘phronesis’ and Kantian ‘moral autonomy’. I think, although

two concepts, for their formal character, imply the concept of freedom, in their

content, they both are different. Hegel’s criticism of Kantian view of ‘morality’

will explain the reason why I think so and it will expose the difference between

Kant’s formalistic morality and agent-centered ethics.

3.1. Kant on Freedom

The moral theory of Kant, to some extent, was a turning point for modern ethical

thought. Before Kant, moral philosophies have taken either the principle of divine

will or that of moral feeling or that of ends as a foundation of their moral

thinking.66 Hence, they were transfering the source of the action beyond moral

agent and his moral actions. Kant regarded ethics on the ground of ‘autonomy of

reason’. A moral action can only be grounded on the practical reason, that is to

say, on agent himself.

Against eudaimonism, Kant insisted that there is a sharp distinction between the theory of self-interest and the theory what is morally right or virtuous. The only unqualified good, Kant famously asserted, is a ‘good will’. A good is one that acts solely ‘from duty’, that is from respect for reason’s moral law, even in spite of all our natural inclinations. Against all theories based on ends, Kant held that the value of any end depends upon its being set as an end by a rational will, which presupposes a process of rational deliberation from principles.67

66 Wood, Allen, ‘Hegel’s Ethics’, in The Cambridge Companion to Hegel, ed.by. Frederick

C.Beiser, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, New York, 1993, p.211. 67 Ibid., p.211-212.

46

Only after Kant we can make a systematic distinction between ‘classical

eudaimonistic moral theories which is based on end or virtue ethics and modern

moral theory which is based on moral principle or is by the sake of duty itself’.

From another perpective, Kant is the original author of making division between

‘theoretical philosophy’ and ‘practical philosophy’ of which compartments and

scopes are quite different.

...Kant saw that our practical reason requires that we act in self-consciousness of our freedom, that is, with an awareness of ou responsibility, even if no theoretical solution to the aporia is possible. Kant’s formula for the Enlightenment, ‘have the courage to make use of your own understanding’, applies just as much to practical reason as it does to theoretical reason. For practical reason is not technical reason. It cannot submit to any received rules of behavior but must acknowledge what is unconditionally demanded, and cannot rest satisfied with what is expedient under particular circumstances.68

Kant, in his study on practical philosophy which is quite diffrent from his

theoretical philosophy, tries to draw a general structure for any moral action. This

moral action, in order to be ‘moral’, should be characterized by the ‘reason’, not

done by something beyond it. This is a great step in the history of ethics that Kant

systematized the central role of human being and human reason in action. Since

the Age of Reformation human being has become the centre of the universe or

nature, society, etc. But this central importance of human being could not be

systematized neither theoretically nor practically. Whether this systematization is

important or not might not be our concern here. I can undoubtedly say that Kant is

the first one who completed or succeeded this task.

68 Gadamer,H.G., Praise of Theory, p. 79.

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The moral problem of Kant’s age, or any age we can say, was the relation of

necessity and freedom, in other words, determination and indetermination. Moral

philosophers have been trying to solve this problem sometimes by emphasizing the

role of ‘necessity’ and making claims upon the ‘inseperable chain of nature and its

law’, and sometimes by emphasizing on the great capacity of reason and its power

of freedom. Kant himself tried to solve this problem by seperating two branches of

philosophy.

From Rousseau, Kant drew the idea that it is possible to reconcile moral obligation with freedom only if in obeying the moral law we are obeying merely our own true will. Kant therefore founded ethics on an ‘imperative’, universally valid for all rational beings and self-legislated by each rational being.69

Because of this reconciliation of moral obligation and freedom, we can say that

Kant’s freedom is the cause of causality. I think he was believing that the general

structure of practical reason, which is founded by and found to freedom, can be

exhibited as that of theoretical reason is founded in his Critique of Pure Reason.

Because morality is founded on autonomy of the will, Kant regarded its validity as dependent on the freedom of the human will. In taking the moral life seriously, we commit ourselves to the faith that our acts are the effects of a free, supersensible self whose dignity raises us above that of all merely natural beings.70

I will, in this section, examine the concepts of will, choice, impulse and freedom,

which are very important in understanding for Kant’s moral philosophy, based

upon his secondary text, namely, ‘Doctrine of Virtue’ (Tugendslehre) which is the

second part of ‘Metapysics of Morals’ (Metaphysik der Sitten). In Kant’s view,

69 Wood, A., ibid., p.212. 70 Ibid.

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the power of ‘choice’ that can be determined by ‘pure reason’ is called ‘free choice’ (freie Willkür). That which can be determined only by inclination (sensuous impulse, stimulus) would be ‘animal choice’(arbitrium brutum). ‘Human choice’ is such that, while it can be affected by impulses, it cannot be determined by them. Hence in itself (apart from an acquired facility of a reason) it is not pure, but it can still be determined to actions by pure will.71

For Kant, freedom of choice is this independence from sensuous impulse in the

determination of choice. This is the ‘negative’ concept of freedom. The ‘positive’

concept of freedom is that of the power of pure reason to be of itself ‘practical’.

But pure reason can be practical only if the maxim of every action is subjected to

the condition that it qualifies as a universal law.72

This is the practical reason’s ‘positive’ concept of freedom; On it there are based

unconditioned practical laws called ‘moral’ laws. But since our power of choice is

sensuously affected and so does not of itself conform with the pure will but often

opposes it, in relation to us these moral laws are ‘imperatives’ (commands and

prohibitions) and, indeed, categorical (unconditioned) imperatives. The ground of

the possibility of categorical imperatives is this: that they are based simply on the

freedom of the power of choice, not on any other characteristic of choice (by

which it can be subjected to a purpose).73

For Kant, moral tradition until his time has tried to define ‘freedom of choice’ as

the power to choose between the alternatives of acting with or against the law

(libertas indifferentiae). But freedom of choice cannot be defined in this way,

71 Kant, I., Doctrine of Virtue, tr.by.Mary J. Gregor, University of Pennslyvania Press,

Philadelphia, 1971, p.10. 72 Ibid. 73 Ibid., pp.19-21.

49

although the power of choice as ‘phenomenon’ gives frequent examples of this in

experience. In Kant’s view, we cannot explain freedom theoretically in its

‘positive’ aspect, as it exercises necessitation on the sensuous power of choice -

that is, freedom as ‘noumenon’, as the power of man viewed merely as an

‘intelligent being’. We can see only this that while our experience of man is a

‘sensible being’ shows that he can choose to act against the law as well as in

conformity with it, his freedom as an ‘intelligent being’ cannot be defined by this,

since appearances cannot explain a supersensible object (like free choice); and

that freedom cannot be located in the rational agent’s ability to choose what is

opposed to his (legislating) reason, even if experience proves often enough that

this happens (though we still cannot conceive the possibility of it). -For it is one

thing to admit this proposition (on the basis of the experience) and another

thing to make it into the ‘principles that defines’ the concept of free choice and

serves as the universal criterion for distinguishing it. Merely to admit a

proposition on the basis of experience is not to say that the characteristic so

admitted belongs ‘necessarily’ to the ‘concept’, but to define the concept in terms

of the characteristic does imply this- Only freedom with regard to the ‘inner

legislation of reason’ is really a power: the possibility of deviating from

legislative reason is lack of a power.74

In the Doctrine of Virtue, Kant makes a distinction between ‘inner’ and ‘outer’

freedom and their implications for each in different areas, which I think will be

74 Ibid., p.38.

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important to comprehend from which the difference between Kantian moral

philosophy and Hegelian ethical thought arise.

The laws of freedom (as distinguished from laws of nature) are called ‘moral’. In so far as they have to do only with mere external actions and their lawfulness they are called ‘juridical’ laws; but if they also require that they themselves (the laws) be the ground determining choice to actions, then they are ‘ethical’ laws. So we say that conformity with juridical law comprises the legality of action, and conformity with ethical law, its morality. But the freedom to which juridical laws refer can be only freedom in the ‘outer’ exercise of choice, whereas the freedom with which ethical laws are concerned is freedom in both the outer and the inner exercise of choice.75

What ‘ethics’ does not have in common with Law (Doctrine of Law) is only the

kind of ‘obligation’ to duties. For the characteristic property of ethical legislation

is that it commands us to perform actions merely because they are duties and to

make the principle of duty itself the sufficient motive of our choice.76

The doctrine of Law, according to Kant, deals only with the ‘formal’ condition of

outer freedom (the consistency of outer freedom with itself if its maxim were made

universal law) -that is, with Law. But ‘ethics’ goes beyond this and provides a

‘matter’ (an object of free choice), an ‘end’ of pure reason which it presents also as

an objectively necessary end, i.e., an end which, so far as men are concerned, it is

a duty to have.77

An ‘end’ is an object of the power of choice (of a rational being), through the thought of which choice is determined to an action to produce this object...But the notion that I am under obligation to take as my end something that lies in the concepts of practical reason, and so to have a material determining ground of choice

75 Ibid., pp.10-1. 76 Ibid., p.19. 77 Ibid., p.38.

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beyond the formal one that Law contains, would be concept of an end ‘which is in itself a duty’.78

According to Kant, the doctrine of this end would not belong to the doctrine of

Law, but rather to ethics, since the concept of self-constraint in accordance with

moral laws belongs only to ethics. For this reason ethics can also be defined as the

system of the ends of pure practical reason. Determination to an ‘end’ is the only

determination of choice which in its very concept excludes the possibility of

compulsion through natural means by another’s act of choice. Another can

indeed compel me to do something that is not my end (but only a means to his

end), but he cannot compel me to make it my end.79

Only ‘duties of inner freedom’, as the condition of all duties of virtue, are ‘ethical’...Inner freedom requires two things of the agent: to be in control of himself in any given case (animus sui compos) -that is, to tame his agitations (Affekten)- and to have mastery over himself (imperium in semetipsum) -that is, to govern his obsessions (Leidenschaften). When these two conditions are fulfilled, the character (indoles) is noble (erecta); it is abject (indoles abiecta, serva).80

Finally, It might be said that Kant’s concept of freedom is regarded as the concept

of freedom in Stoics as it implies only the ‘inner freedom’ and does not permit ‘the

idea of freedom’ being actualized or externalized. ‘Inner self’ is seperated from

the ‘outer self’, and the experience of freedom is divided into two as well.

Freedom is prisoned into the ‘darkness of the inner self’. There is no other as a

‘pre-existent’ (to ‘consciousness of freedom’) who summons the self to the

responsibility and freedom. Only in this way, through the mediation of other and

78 Ibid., p.39. 79 Ibid. 80 Ibid., pp.68-69.

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reciprocal interaction, the experience of freedom can be internalized. Hence, I

think only ‘externalized freedom’ is true in essence to define what is intended to

say by this concept. This is actualized in the social structure and developed by the

social institutions through which any groups of people or peoples of the world

have been in struggle for recognition to realize freedom in the history of mankind.

Because of this reason, if we admit that, as Kant, Fichte and Hegel believe that,

true meaning of or true essence of history is the actualization of freedom, then

these concepts are very related with each other. In this view, if social institutions

become ‘rational’, the development of freedom can be more easily explicit.

3.2. Freedom and Intersubjectivity in Fichte

Before examining the Hegelian idea of freedom I would like to introduce Fichtean

practical philosophy which was very influential on Hegel and Marx in connection

to his social and practical philosophy in the post-Kantian period of 19th century .

According to Kant, the autonomy of human will is possible only on the basis of

practical mind. Theoretical philosophy of Kant does not deny the possibility of

freedom but only indicates it. It does not specifically examine it. But it is practical

which enables us to accomplish a more precise determination of freedom, and it

does so on the basis of the very form of the practical law. The practical, in this

context, implies the possibility of a new causality next to the already existent,

theoretically determined causality of nature. Such a law is the ‘Categorical

Imperative’.

53

The Categorical Imperative puts forward the necessity of universalizing our

subjective conduct if it is to be valid objectively. Moreover, our maxims should

always be valid ‘intersubjectively’. Here we reach the idea of ‘intersubjectivity’ at

the level of practical philosophy that is the idea of the objectivity of moral

conduct. But it is discernable that Kant investigates the possibility of freedom on

the basis of the universal premises of the transcendental structure of spiritual

faculties. He does not investigate the other possibility: that is to say, transcendental

structure which can itself be thematized in developing the concept of inter-

subjectivity, i.e., interaction. Hegel’s critique of Kant followed in these steps. It is

only at Hegel’s speculative level that the relation between freedom and interaction

is thematized.81

Question here arises from the fact that we admit ‘mind’ whether as ‘a priori

practical fact’ or as determined by ‘the phenomenological perspective of history’.

Hence the question about the possibility of human freedom is not resolvable at the

level of the theoretical reason. The third antinomy of the Critique of Pure Reason

only indicates the possibility of freedom. The basic interest of practical

philosophy, therefore, is the question of ‘determining’ freedom. I will now

investigate the answer for this question by introducing the philosophy of Fichte

and his concepts which were very influential on Hegel especially in the discussion

of struggle for recognition and freedom.

The general characteristic of Fichtean idealism is depended upon the proposition

that ‘no object without a subject’, or upon the opposition to the object-dependent

81 Miloviç, Miroslav, A Reflexive Argument, A Dissertation, 1989.

54

philosophy, namely, ‘dogmatism’. For this philosophy which is called dogmatism,

knowledge of the subjet is determined by the object and, in this view, the object is

the measure of any knowledge. In contrast, Fichte defenses the activity of subject

in the process of knowing. According to Fichte, unlike Kant, thinking is an activity

and it is in essence a ‘practical’ activity. He proposes the ‘priority’ of the practice

upon theory. This is quite different from the classical sense of the relation between

theory and practice.

In Fichte’s sense, priority of the practical activity is related to the ‘awareness of

the self’ that self-awareness involves the activity of seperating ‘I’ from ‘not-I’.

This activity of seperation is the ‘free activity of I’. By means of the awareness of

the self, ‘I’ can take itself as a subject as well as an object. It means that awareness

is the awareness of the ‘activity’ which is ‘freely’ performed. After a quick

explanation I can move on to the main concern of this section which is important

for the thesis in general.

Fichte’s standpoint is Kantian critical philosophy. He claimed that he standed

within the philosophy of Kant and developed it. But, as a result, I think, Fichte

took post-Kantian idealism to a quite different direction. The crucial point to

understand what Fichte’s aim is that he denies a substantial self or self as a given

entity. “Rather the ‘being’ of the self consists in action, and freedom is inherent in

action. As the First Introduction to Wissenschaftslehre [The Science of

Knowledge] makes clear, although freedom is not given but must be developed.”82

In this sense, self is the collections of his actions and the meaning of the subject

82 Williams, R.R., Recognition: Fichte and Hegel on the Other, p.55.

55

does not get beyond this definition. He is determined to be in activity and by this

activity he finds true essence of himself. There is nothing beyond his activity as a

given meaning. He builds up himself by this essential property.

At the beginning of this section, I tried to clarify some concepts of Fichte that

affected Hegel and his social philosophy in great extent. Fichte expands the scope

of ‘subjectivistic’ philosophy by the concepts of ‘summons’ and ‘recognition’

which are the samples of ‘a philosophy of intersubjectivity’. With the help of these

concepts Fichte prevents any mistaken views claiming that his philosophy

excludes the other and is subjectivist in character. His theory of intersubjectivity is

explicitly the study of the relation of self and other. Consciousness of freedom

does not need an inner action of the self within itself, on the contrary it needs the

‘primary existent’ of the other. In this sense, other is the meaning of the action of

the self.

Fichte’s theory of ‘intersubjectivity’ finds expression in the twin concepts of ‘summons’ (Aufforderung) and ‘recognition’ (Aner-kennung). Its basic idea is that freedom and responsibility must be mediated through an objectification of the self which the self both requires in order to become conscious of its freedom, and yet cannot achieve by itself. The ego is so far from being ‘absolutely autonomous’ that it is dependent upon the recognition of others to become conscious of its freedom. Summons and recognition refer to the mediation of the self to itself by the other, through which freedom becomes explicit. We are thus confronted with the following paradox: ‘autonomous’ self-consciousness is not given; it is a mediated result of interpersonal interaction.83

83 The term ‘Aufforderung’ is difficult to translate. It can be translated as ‘demand’. It can also

mean ‘call’, ‘request’, and ‘summon’. Demand seems to be too specific and determinate. Fichte’s point is that other lays claim upon my freedom by his very presence, and so calls or summons me to freedom, to responsible activity, etc. This is not far from the concept of a ‘call of conscience’, provided that conscience be understood in the etymological sense of intersubjective knowing, or conscientia (Williams, R.R., ibid., p.57).

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Fichte transforms the relation of the self with himself into the relation with other

and he uncovers what the implicit is in this new relationship. Self cannot be

conscious of his freedom unless he encounters with the other and takes the

message of other. Whatever this message we can say, it implies to provide the self

reflecting back on himself and constructing to true certainty of himself. Freedom is

the result of this relation with other.

“The other summons me to responsibility. The other who summons me to freedom

and responsibility, also evokes my recognition (Anerkennung) of him. Thus

reciprocity seems to be both necessary and possible.”84 Through the other, self

conceives the consciousness of ‘necessity’ and to have ‘possibility to act’. In this

reciprocal relation with other, self needs to be conscious of himself which is very

related to his recognition of other. Other provides my action to be decisive in

character and not be tentative or momentary, on the contrary, substantial,

persistent. It means that the self directs his attention into the action of other and

makes other’s claim upon himself as a guide. He cannot do anything without

considering or regarding this guideness or tension. Thus, what is ought to be is

derived from the relation with the other. Because other who summons the self to

responsibility and freedom also restricts and brings a barrier to the action of the

self. Other is the source of an ethical injunction: freedom is simultaneously elicited

and placed under a restriction by the other. “What is distinctive is that the

summoner restricts his freedom for the sake of the one summoned. For this reason,

84 Ibid., p.58.

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Fichte identifies summons (Aufforderung) with education (Erziehung)”85 which we

here might not mention any more.

What Fichte’s intention with summons of the other is that it shows the self what he

is and what he ought to be. From this point of view, the other is the starting point

of ethical relation which can be related to Levinas’ philosophy in some extent. The

other is the sign of responsibility and responsible freedom. Since

the summons has ethical significance, its telos is an acknowledgement of the claim of the other, a summons to responsible freedom. In positing of freedom, I do not appropriate myself all the freedom that I posit, but leave open freedom for the other.86

By encountering with the other the self finds itself as an object. Because he can

discern between what his position is and what is needed. He can compare among

and relate to different alternatives. It provides the possibility of free activity to

change himself. Freedom is the freedom of one that can take himself as an object

and can be a conscious of freedom.

How may the self find itself as object, and so become conscious of freedom?...Human freedom becomes object for itself through and by means of the summons (Aufforderung) of the other. Fichte’s thesis is that self-consciousness and freedom are intersubjectively mediated. The explicit self-consciousness of freedom is not something that the self can give to itself. Rather, my consciousness of freedom arises out of the claims of the other upon me.87

In this context, it might seem that the relation of freedom and summons which

Fichte wants to explain is so weak. However, by the concept of summons, Fichte

85 Ibid., p.59. 86 Ibid., pp.59-68. 87 Ibid., p.58.

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enlightens the relation between determination and self-determination. Summons

refers to the presupposition of the capacity for one’s freedom. Through the

summons of the other the self makes a decision between alternatives and

determine himself to these decisions. The self who receives the summon comes to

face with free-choosing.

The call of the other is not a physical force or compulsion, nor a command that must be obeyed. The one receiving the summons ‘is’ in no way compelled or necessitated to action, like an effect is rendered necessary by its cause. Rather, the summons is an occasion for decision: the self can accede to the summons, deny it, or ignore it. The summons of the other presupposes the capacity for, and mediates the consciousness of, freedom in the one to whom it is directed. It should be noted that what is externally mediated by the other is not freedom per se, but only the consciousness of freedom. Freedom belongs ontologically to human nature even though it remains a mere potentiality, and/or possibility until the self is summoned to freedom. It is the consciousness of freedom, and not the ontological capacity or potentiality of freedom, that requires intersubjective mediation, ‘a determination to self-determination’ as Fichte puts it.88

The summons, with which any ethical relation begins, also involves the direction

of any action to specific ‘telos’. ‘Co-existence’ presupposes to give a specific

meaning to what people make together. This activity of doing and acting together

is directed into certain aims.

There is nothing in human nature that cannot be co-considered with a certain aim and it comes from an intelligent being: The cause of the summons must therefore, necessarily have the concept of reason and freedom.89

88 Ibid., p.59. 89 Ibid., p.59.

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According to Fichte, because of the very existence of human being, there are

certain aims in community and they are given and have a priority over particular

beings and, by birth, people find them as a given fact and they direct their

attentions and concerns for this aim or that aim. Alternatives are dependent to

‘reciprocal relations’ and call of the other who admits, at first, the self as a free self

and is able to make decision.

In the Aufforderung, the other as the occasion on for evocation of my consciousness of freedom, has priority over my own activity. This priority of the other limits and inverts the transcendental primacy of subjectivity over being...Consequently, Aufforderung, is not simply a transcendental condition a priori; but a fact, a given. It is not something inferred as a ground, but a fact or starting point. As such, it refers to the prior action of the other.90

But, Aufforderung is not enough for the further inquiry. Because

...action by one is insufficient, for recognition must be reciprocal: The relation of free beings to one another is a relation of reciprocity through intelligence and freedom. Neither can recognize the other if both do not mutually recognize each other. And neither can treat the other as a free being if both do not do so mutually and reciprocally.91

We can follow this passage from Aufforderung to Anerkennung in the section of

‘Desire and Struggle for Recognition’. Through this section I tried to display the

close connection between intersubjectivity and freedom and also Fichtean

intersubjective philosophy which represents a passage from Kant to Hegel.

90 Ibid., p.60. 91 Ibid., p.61.

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3.3. Hegel’s Criticism of Kant

In this section, I intend to focus upon Hegel’s criticism of the the concept of ‘will’

and the ‘Categorical Imperative’ in Kant’s practical philosophy. The will for Kant

gives objective, imperative laws of freedom, laws which state what ought to

happen. Hegel’s criticism is that the Categorical Imperative is purely formal in

nature.

...Hence to say that a man must make the Good the content of his will raises the question, what the content is, and what are the means of ascertaining what good is. Nor does it get one over the difficulty by the principle that the will must be consistent with itself, or by the precept to do duty for the sake of duty.92

Hegel is making his critique on the will and its content that for him the sufficient

condition of its being good is problematic. This problem of giving ‘good’ a content

cannot be provided by Kant’s concept of duty because the precept to act for the

sake of duty alone leaves the concept of duty equally vacuous. Hegel thinks Kant’s

practical philosophy a complete failure in this respect, namely the question of

‘what I ought to do?’ cannot be answered by its resources alone. Because ‘the

content’ which practical reason automatically or, in appropriate words,

spontaneously determines has nothing to determine.

...the problem, as Hegel sees it, is that the moral will’s insistence that it should wil only what duty prescribes actually deprives it of any definite goals, and leaves it willing merely the empty form of duty for duty’s sake...93

92 Hegel, G.W.F., Logic: Being Part One of the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences,

tr.by.William Wallace, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1975, §54n. 93 Houlgate, Stephen, Freedom, Truth and History, Routledge, London and New York, 1991, p.95.

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We can suddenly overcome the deficiency of the will’s self-contained by the

proposition that will requires ‘intersubjective mediation’, ‘a determination to self-

determination’. Through by this mediation or determination, will provides the true

content. Determination or mediation here also refers back to the concept of

‘experience’ (Erfahrung) by which we can consider a phenomenological analysis

of self-consciousness (Selbstbewusstein) I attempted to clarify in the section of

‘Desire and Struggle for Recognition’.

Hegel finds Kant’s division of the will into lower and higher faculties not inapt.

Kant claims that there is a distinction between the will as emprically determined,

by impulses, inclinations etc., and the will as self-determining.94 Kant is right, in

Hegel’s view, not to found morality on the emprical particular desire for happiness

(Glückseligkeit) which would provide a merely changing and contingent content

for ethics. Despite this, Kant does not recognize the relation between happiness

which is very related to the one’s self-motivation and universal law as moral law.

In other words, Kant could not exhibit the relation between what emprical is and

what universal is. This sort of happiness does have an ethical role for Hegel.

Fundamentally it is the content of ethics. Hegel will try later to call ‘Spirit’ (Geist)

within which contingency and lawfulness find their true meaning.

According to Kant’s moral philosophy, practical reason, in the form of the pure

autonomous will, can determine actions. “It is an inscrutable faculty in which the

concept of causality is contained...in relation to the moral law which determines its

94 Hegel, G.W.F., Lectures on the History of Philosophy, tr.by E.S.Haldane& Frances S.Simson,

Vol.III, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London; Humanities Press, New York, 1974, p.458.

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reality.”95 Practical reasoning has an autonomy which theoretical reasoning can

never attain. “All morality of action now rests upon the conviction that the act is

done with consciousness of the law, for the sake of the law and for itself, without

any regard for what makes for happiness.”96

Hegel praises the will as self-determining, but thinks again this too is damaged by

a lack of content. “It is a great advance when the principle is established that

freedom is the last hinge on man turns, a highest possible pinnacle, which allows

nothing further to be imposed upon it.”97 Despite this fact, for Hegel, we are faced

again with a problem that we need an answer to the question of ‘What specifically

should I will?’ From this point of view, Kant gives only a negative conception of

freedom: as absence of emprical determination plus self-determination. The will

makes itself be what it is. This in turn is just tautologous in Hegel’s view: “It is the

identity of the will with itself, its at homeness with itself...This freedom then is

only the negative of everything else.”98 Freedom is attained only by getting

divorced with what external is to ‘self-contained will.’

In Kant’s moral philosophy, the particular will and the universal will are both

identified. We might conceive this fact from the concept of ‘reverence’ in Kant.

Although reverence is a feeling, it is not a feeling received through outside

influence, but it is something that comes from subject’s ‘moral autonomy’. Thus

objective and subjective factors are united in the principle of moral autonomy:

95 Kant, I., Critique of Practical Reason, tr.by.Lewis White Beck, Macmillan Pub. Co., New York;

Maxwell Macmillan Canada, Toronto, 1993, pp.49,57-8. 96 Hegel, G.W.F., Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Vol.III, p.458. 97 Ibid., p.459. 98 Ibid., p.460.

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There is nothing left able to determine the will except objectively the law and subjectively pure reverence for this practical law and therefore the maxim of obeying this law even to the detriment of all my inclinations.99

For Kant, morality presupposes the Categorical Imperative and the Categorical

Imperative presupposes autonomy. As Categorical Imperative is ‘unconditioned’,

i.e., is determined only by itself, it is seperated from the one the law ‘hypothetical’.

This kind of laws “declare an action to be practically necessary as a means to the

attainment of something else that one wills: their object is good for some

purposes.”100 Hegel opposes to the distinction between hypothetical and

categorical law, which Kant had brought as a necessary point for justifying any

moral action. His alternative is considered within the realm of Sittlichkeit that will

be the next section of the thesis. In this realm, all laws, which aims at certain

end(s), and Categorical Imperative, which is understood only by pure autonomous

will, are regarded together. These laws are only justified together only if the moral

theory is based on the reconciliation of ‘good’ and ‘moral autonomy’.

In this context, Hegel tries to overcome Kant’s dualistic explanation on human

being by using two elements of Aristotle’s moral and political thought. First,

Aristotle had held that a combination of intellectual and moral virtues is necessary

for the citizens of a civilized community. These include the practical intellectual

virtue of prudence (phronesis), related to ultimate particular things, a form of

educated perception both of one’s own interests and of those of one’s fellows, and

the ethical virtue of temperance (sophrosyne), which regulates the individual’s

99 Kant, I., Groundwork for the Metapysics of Morals, tr.by J.W.Ellington, Hackett Publishing

Company, Indianapolis, 1981, pp. 68-9. 100 Ibid., p.82.

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enjoyments, promoting such pleasures as conduce to health and fitness in a

moderate and right degree. Second, for Aristotle, there was no sharp division

between the sciences and the virtues of the individual, on the one hand, and those

of the community, on the other. Prudence (phronesis) is the same quality of mind

as political science, though differently conceived.101 We can conclude from this

that what is remarkable in the writings of Plato and Aristotle is the unity of ethics

and politics. Ethics of Greek presupposed the structure shared by all ‘demos’ in

polis and it was resulting in the common ends and desires shared by all. Against

the Kantian dualism between individual and society, Hegel’s aim is the same with

the aim of Plato and especially with that of Aristotle that individual should be

investigated within the social realm. Because what is good for the individual

cannot be considered without what is good for the whole society.

Also for Rousseau, society should be investigated within the individual, and

conversely, individual should be investigated within the society; anyone who

wishes to distinguish one of them from another will never understand both of them

properly. Following Rousseau, Hegel’s project in moral and political philosophy

can be understood, in part, as an attempt to revive the Aristotelian idea of the

political community as an embodiement, a form of expression and flourishing of

both intellectual and moral virtues, while at the same time making space for the

101 Gadamer, in his very important essay called Aristotle and Categorical Imperative, makes a

paralellism between Aristotle’s concept of ‘phronesis’ and Kant’s ‘moral autonomy’. I think though the paralellism might be considered between them in regarding for their form, we cannot say for the same thing related to their content. Aristotle’s phronesis refers also to the political action. On the contrary, the moral autonomy refers only to the moral action. Because the realm of politics is the realm of ‘heteronomy’, not ‘autonomy’ (Cf. Gadamer, Hans-Georg, ‘Aristotle and Categorical Imperative’, in Action and Contemplation, R.C.Bartlett& S.D.Collins (ed.), State University of New York Press, Albany,1999, pp.53-67).

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wholly modern division between public and private spheres. Hegel’s revaluation of

public sphere with truly modern self will be examined in the following section of

my thesis.

3.4. Sittlichkeit vs. Moralität

Hegel examines individual and his will in the modern world at three stages: i)

Abstract Right, ii) Morality, iii) Ethical Life. In these stages he investigates the

degree of human freedom and its actualization. In the sphere of ‘abstract right’, the

individual is conceived as a ‘person’102, a free volitional agent, capable of

abstracting completely from its desires and situation, and demanding an external

sphere for the exercise of its arbitrary freedom.103 This sphere begins with the

person’s external body and extends to all the person’s property.104

A second but less abstract sphere is that of ‘morality’ in which the individual is

conceived as a ‘subject’, an agent possessing moral responsibility and a distinctive

good or welfare of its own, which makes claims on the subjective wills of others.

Morality is the sphere in which the self is regarded as a ‘volitional subject’. In the

subject, the opposition between universal and particular will has been

‘internalized’; the aim of the moral subject is to make his particular will conform

to the universal will. As a subject, the self seeks to actualize itself through its own

volition and action, and so a central focus of morality is concerned with our

102 Hegel, G.W.F., Philosophy of Right, tr.by.T.M.Knox, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1971,

§§34-36. 103 Ibid., §41. 104 Ibid., §§45-47.

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responsibility for actions and their consequences105, with the value of subjective

freedom, the right of individuals to determine the course of their own lives and to

take satisfactions in their choices106.

I think most important difference between moral theory of Kant and Hegel’s ethics

appears in Hegel’s comparing and sublating ‘morality’ (Moralität), which is the

Kantian standpoint of ‘ought’, with ‘ethical life’ (Sittlichkeit), which is the

customary morality of an actual society. According to Hegel, moral standpoint of

Kant is ‘morality’. For him, this is the realm of individual’s action performed from

duty. Moralität “throughout portrays the real aspect of the concept of freedom”107,

but cannot embody that concept completely. Limited to Moralität, Kant’s principle

of action makes the standpoint of ‘ethical life’ (Sittlichkeit) completely impossible,

in fact they explicitly nullify it and spurn it.108 The appropriate rules for a society

cannot, in Hegel’s view, be derived from such ‘abstract a priori’ criteria like

Kant’s Categorical Imperative but have, rather, to be derived from an analysis of

the particular circumstances of a society.

In the sphere of Moralität self-actualization consists in the actualization of the

subject through the conformity of its insight and intention to the good.109 In

morality, the subject, defines itself as responsible for the motives and intentions of

its actions but not for their consequences. For the consequences occur in the realm

of civil society in which recognition of the selves appears, and the moral

105 Ibid., §§115-120. 106 Ibid., §§121-4. 107 Ibid., §106. 108 Ibid., §33. 109 Ibid., §131.

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standpoint precisely understands itself as not implicated in that realm. Morality is

defined as the autonomous realm of what ought to be, of a concept of good

intention which the individual should continually impose on himself, of a relation

which suppresses part of himself, and is not unified with the realm of the deed

itself. “Hence a bad deed may be obviated by a good intention, and the good

intention should be repeatedly espoused.”110

In this sense, Hegel explains that the ‘morality of intention’ can equally justify

immoral as well as moral acts. This might be absurd in a sense, but disagreement is

quite right as Kant seperated the motive from the deed. According to Hegel, the

definition of the ‘will’, in Kant’s view, is abstracted from real relations. The

‘good’ is defined as doing one’s duty, but ‘duty’ is defined only formally as

submission to a command in the case of every subjective maxim of action. Duty

therefore depends on the individual’s contingent insight into his duty, and is thus

mere ‘intuition’ not ‘recognition’ of real relations.

From the objective side of action, formal character of relation between duty and

good thus isolates the subject from the institutions which have determined it.

Because the good is defined as having an abstract character and falls within the

isolated subjectivity that is certain of itself (Gewissheit).

...Subjectivity, in its universality reflected into itself, is the absolute inward certainty of itself; it is that which posits particularity, and it is the determining and decisive factor -the conscience (Gewissen).111

110 Rose, Gillian, Hegel Contra Sociology, Atlantic Highlands, London; Athlone, NJ, 1995, p.86. 111 Hegel, G.W.F., Philosophy of Right, §136.

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From the moral standpoint of Kant, through reflecting into itself and isolating itself

from any external thing ‘conscience’ of subject is defined as the most ‘sublime’

authority in moral acts or as the final criterion of duty. But, on the other hand, for

Hegel, by making a distance from the consequences of its deeds, subject looses its

attachment with the concrete and real social relations which have determined it

and in the context of which it acts. “Conscience is that deepest inner solitude

within oneself in which all externals and all limitation have disappeared –it is a

total withdrawal into the self.”112

According to Hegel, self-isolating from externality and final criterion of duty to

determine what good is do not explain true content of our moral action. This can

be checked and specified only by or within the realm of concrete social relations

which is called ‘ethical life’ (Sittlichkeit). In this realm, the content of our moral

duties is determined through the social roles of persons in specific relationships.

The realm of this recognizable relations includes within itself an ethical

indeterminancy and, at the same time, conflict. In this new conceptualization, the

self will take its materials from the external things. Thus the ultimate moral

criterion can only be made explicit by emphasizing the crucial role of language,

work and culture which are external to us, but at the same time, determine and

liberate us. Each action which directs to anything presupposes different

interpretation of the thing it directs. So there are many opportunities to determine

our actions.

112 Ibid., §136A.

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Hegel, in his mature work called ‘Philosophy of Right’ (Philosophie des Rechts)

distinguishes between the ‘moral duties’ and ‘ethical duties’. From the standpoint

of morality, Hegel insists, any act that accords with the good may be considered a

duty.113 ‘Moral duties’ are experienced as constraints on our will but have no

specifiable content. ‘Ethical duties’, by contrast, are ‘duties of relationships’.114

Similar to Aristotle, these are the actions we perform in fulfillment of the social

roles that constitute our concrete identity as individuals. The fulfillment of these

social roles is also self-fulfillment. From this point of view, Hegel identifies

ethical virtues with social roles. Moral duties tell me what I must do in order to go

about my own personal business with a clear conscience; they constrain me, so

that my proper life begins only when they have been discharged. Ethical duties,

however, are “the substance of my own being.”115 They include the love I feel for

my family and the self-satisfaction I get from my profession. For this reason,

Hegel insists that ethical duties are not constraining, but liberating.116 So, here we

see that Hegel takes ethical action to be the most powerful, as well as the most

admirable, mode of human conduct as Aristotle did before him.

Kant thinks that “perfected morality must remain a Beyond”117, because human

beings are finite and imperfect. In support of the this ‘postulate’, Kant argues that

we are bound to strive for the goal of holiness,

complete fitness of the will to the moral law which our knowledge of ourselves shows to be unattainable for the mortal men: only

113 Ibid., §133. 114 Ibid., §150. 115 Ibid., §148. 116 Ibid., §149. 117 Hegel, G.W.F., Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Vol.III, p.461.

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endless progress from lower to higher stages of moral perfection is possible to a rational but finite being.118

Thus sending moral perfection beyond the human world, the goal of man is

attainable only in the immortality of the soul. In contrast to the Kant’s view point

of the self-perfection of man, Hegel finds the domain of the true infinite, true

perfection, here on earth, in Sittlichkeit: “It is the ‘will’ whose potentialities have

become fully explicit which is truly infinite, because its object is itself and so is

not in its eyes an ‘other’ or a barrier...”119

The counter-concept of Hegel for Moralität is ‘Sittlichkeit’ which involves a social

and political meaning. It is at the level of Sittlichkeit that we can transform the

question of ‘What should I will?’ into the question of ‘What set of relationships

should be willed in order to construct a rational legitimate social order?’ or ‘What

set of relationships can allow such rational will? Only by answering these

questions ‘means’ and ‘ends’ are both thematized to determine a moral action.

Interdependency and interaction of the will to other’s will are aimed in this level

and only through this way will might have true content of itself. In doing so, Hegel

tries to fill the gap between subjectivity and objectivity of the will.

Hegel, starting with early work called ‘System of Ethical Life’ (System der

Sittlichkeit), investigates the level of sociality at which an individual lives an

objective ethical life, consisting of laws and customs. In this work, ethical life was

set up as ‘people’: “the intuition of ethical life, the form in which it appears in its

118 Kant, I., Cririque of Practical Reason, p.127. 119 Hegel, G.W.F., Philosophy of Right, §22.

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particular aspect, is the people.”120 This ethical life was representing ‘a lived

organic connection between public standards and particular aspirations’. Hegel

regards objective and determinate moral standards as founded on the organization

of a concrete social order, and his emphasis on ‘custom’ is to stress the importance

of freedom, that is, self-harmony or being with oneself in one’s social life, as the

foundation of ethical norms.

Hegel, one year later, in his First Philosophy of Spirit develops his investigations

and considers the form of language and work as a medium between individual’s

subjective interest and society’s objective meaning. They are the objectifications

of the subjective will and through them subject finds its identity in the object it

produces. Hegel, by means of work and language, seeks for the ground which

provides people being together and doing and acting towards specific goals. This

substantiality was before First Philosophy of Spirit ‘people’, but then it became the

form of ‘work’ and ‘language’ which I briefly explained at the end of first chapter

as the forms of ‘intersubjectivity’.

Through the concept of ‘morality’, according to Hegel, Kant conceived the

principle of the modern society. This principle is the free will which wills itself

and its own freedom and it is the self-determining activity. Despite this, it also

refers to the self which is alienated from public life. Public life seems external to

individual which seeks for its own welfare and interest. This negative freedom of

120 Hegel, G.F.W., System of Ethical Life and First Philosophy of Spirit, ed. and tr.by M.Knox,

State University of New York Press, Albany, 1979, p.146.

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the self is the result of ‘formalistic’ approach of which Hegel attacks to all

categories.

Formalism also includes the strict division between sense and reason that as it

seperates individual from society it also seperates individual, in subjective level,

from his desires, impulses or passions as if they are not the motives for further

practical and rational applications. For Hegel this formalism which appears in

variety of forms is the cause of any alienation of the self. In Hegel’s standpoint of

‘ethical life’ (Sittlichkeit), there cannot be this kind of disharmony among people

in objective level, and also within the individual in subjective level. Accordingly,

ethical life originally refers to an ethics of character, emphasizing rational

dispositions and practical judgment in concrete situations, in contrast to a morality

of norms, where the emphasis is on deriving particular actions from general rules.

In this sense, self-interested motives cooperate with actions which is performed by

the duty itself. Concrete situations determine what duty will tell and, in conversely,

unpredictable capacity of autonomous will desribes the way action directs itself.

While Hegel is analyzing and criticizing the ‘abstract right’ and the ‘morality’ he

also sees the conceptions of ‘person’ in abstract right’ and ‘subject’ in morality as

applying universally to all human beings. Both conceptions, however, are

abstractions, which cannot be actualized directly. Personhood and subjectivity can

be actualized only by being given concrete embodiment in the roles of a

harmonious social system or ethical life. Hegel’s Philosophy of Right is an attempt

to present modern society as an ethical life in which distinctively modern self-

conceptions are made concrete and so actualized. As Rose also points out, it is

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crucial to Hegel’s conception of morality that we deserve credit or blame only for

real acts and accomplishments, not for mere inner intentions and dispositions.121

Hegel is the originator of the view, perhaps more often associated with Sartre, that

“What the subject is, is the series of its actions.”122

Hegel asserts that the ‘subject’ cannot be understood by fixed and abstract terms,

on the contrary, it acquires its true meaning in a series of relations (Verhaltnis) to

each other. In his early works and Philosophy of Right, the illusions and

experiences of moral and political consciousness are presented in an order

designed to show how consciousness may progress through them to

comprehension of the determination of ‘ethical life’. Hegel starts from what

appears to ‘ordinary consciousness’123 as the most ‘natural’ and ‘immediate’

ethical relations, the family, or the sphere of needs, civil society. In building up the

sociality, the family, for instance, is the relation which restores a real totality, an

identity of needs, sexual difference and relation of parents to children, which

cannot be considered a formal and ideal relation. Hegel was opposed in general to

derive social cohesion and political unity from any abstract concepts such as the

idea of the state as a ‘contract’. He was therefore opposed to the particular idea in

Kant of marriage as a contract. Hegel’s argument is that any notion of freedom,

whether Kant’s moral autonomy or Fichte’s legal freedom, which is opposed to

necessity or the realm of nature, justifies the crimes which arise out of the real

inequality presupposed by the ‘formal’ equality of social relations. Because,

121 Rose, Gillian, Hegel Contra Sociology, p.53. 122 Hegel, G.W.F., Philosophy of Right, §124. 123 Similar to the method of The Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel begins with ‘ordinary

consciousness’ in his later work of Philosophy of Right as well.

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family here was assumed as an ideality of contract and its ideality (can be defined

as the ideal of freedom in this respect) denied real relations and hence fixed them.

As a result of this, all aspect of social life which do not conform to the abstract

ideal are injured, punished, suppressed.

3.5. Hegel on Freedom

According to Hegel, ‘transcendental’ or ‘critical’ philosophy cannot conceive of

the ‘content’ of freedom but only of the ‘form’ of freedom, because it limits itself

to justification of the kind of judgments made by a reason which is divided into

two. Kant’s notion of moral autonomy is formal, not only because it excludes

natural desire and inclination from freedom, but because it classifies ‘legality’, the

social realm, with the heteronomous hindrances to the formation of a free will.

Freedom, in Hegel’s view, cannot be concretely conceived by Kant, because it

depends, for him, on an absolute difference between the realm of necessity

(theoretical reason) and the realm of freedom (practical reason). Freedom can

therefore only be conceived in a negative sense, as freedom from necessity.

According to Fichte, freedom is not a given object, rather it is that provides and

needs the actuality of man, in other words, freedom is an end which is fulfilled.

For this reason, in order for man to be free, he should make himself end in itself.

He should self-actualize himself as an end by self-producing his own laws. This is,

at the same time, the process of knowing himself. All history of mankind, in

Fichte’s view, should be seen as a development of the process towards freedom.

Because, for him, it is only freedom that will be fulfilling the content of history,

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that is to say, freedom will give a meaning to the meaningless plurality of

historical events. Man was thrown into the world and within this throwness, he

tries to realize both himself and his own freedom. In the history of mankind,

philosophy is merely a tool for him, in this actualization, in order to obtain to reach

at that end. For this respect, the history of philosophical thought is also the history

of process for human freedom.

In agreement with this view, in the Philosophy of Right, Hegel combines the

theoretical activity with practical one and shows the close connection of the

activity of negation with practical/transformative activity of human being. As we

remember from the dialectic of master and slave;

Hegel defined human practical activity as bringing about some change in the world in accordance with a determination that is ‘posited by me’. If one is to bring about change in this way, one must not only have some conception of what is to be brought about; one must also be able to conceive of the possibility of change being effected -that is, of the world becoming a different place to live in and of one’s own activity making that difference. Without understanding that the world can be changed and that I can bring about such change, I could not regard myself as a practical being. Indeed, my very identity as a practical being lies in knowing myself to be the source of possible changes in the world that follow from as yet unrealized possibilities conceived and ‘posited by me’.124

It is clear from the explanation of practical activity that being conscious of

bringing about a change in the world implies both the ability to make a seperation

of ‘now’ from ‘future’, through which we are aware of our potentialities, and, at

the same time, the ability to make ‘specific’ and ‘determinate’ decisions through

which we can make some plans about how we live. While previous one is refering

124 Houlgate, Stephen, “The Unity of Theoretical and Practical Spirit in Hegel’s Concept of

Freedom”, in Review of Metaphysics, No:48, June 1995, p.864.

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to the concept of ‘abstraction’ or ‘negative determination’ the latter is refering to

the concept of ‘positive determination’. Through the abstraction of mind from the

specific situation and being conscious of the new and unrealized possibilities we

obtain the ‘negative determination’. But this is not sufficient reason to explain the

relation between consciousness and the world. Because being conscious of

something implied also being conscious of the necessity and indeterminancy at the

same time.

In so far as I abstract in this way from what I find myself to be, and understand that, as essentially practical, I can always project new possibilities for myself (and the world), I understand that I am not fixed or defined by whatever I find myself to be, by my nature, talent, and so on. That is to say, by understanding myself as essentially the source of new possibility, I understand that what I ‘am’ is ultimately not determined, but is instead essentially indeterminate.125

We can compare here the change as human practical activity with the activity of

negativity in the first chapter and remember the slave’s process of passage to the

level of self-consciousness at the end of the struggle for recognition. Thus practical

activity does not only involve making ‘abstraction’ from the given being, but also

is the ability to make specific choices, deciding to satisfy these desires and not

those, and so to settle on certain determinate possibilities rather than others.126 We

are again faced with the direct relation of desire and will. For Hegel one cannot

easily make a seperation between these two and talk about the domination of the

one by the other. From this point of view, the expression of practical activity

contains primarily the inseperable cooperation of the power of the free will and

125 Ibid., p.865. 126 Ibid., p.866.

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desire. Choices which is stemming from the freedom of the will are also directed

to the specific ends by consciousness of or awareness of one’s specific desires,

interests and possibilities to follow. We cannot easily say in this sense that

practical activity entails the seperation of will and desire. This cooperation and

indistinguishable togetherness makes the indeterminancy of subject in a given

situation possible, and, at the same time, open the way for the contingent or

arbitrary character of the agent’s action.

For Hegel, in related to his idea of ‘ethical life’, freedom is appeared or realized

only within the realm of society. Because of this explanation, it should be seen as a

‘political freedom’. According to Hegel, in order to be free is ‘to be with himself

within an other’ (Beisichseln im Anderssein). Only through this, man can

recognize himself as a truly free and independent being. Man can only be free if he

is an ‘ethical citizen’ in a certain society. In this sense, slave, in the dialectic of

master and slave, was not an ethical citizen because he was not being recognized

by the master. In order to be an ‘ethical citizen’, ‘equal’ recognition should be

needed. Because, for Hegel, freedom is the ‘right’ which is recognized by the

other.

Similar to Kant and Fichte, Hegel claims that essence and vocation of will is

‘freedom’. Because the only thing which gives the ‘will’ true meaning of itself is

freedom. There is nothing beyond it to will and to direct our attentions, interests,

desires, etc.

We may easily see the will, in Kant’s view, is the essence of ‘subjective’ freedom.

All Hegel’s critiques of the moral duty and ‘Categorical Imperative’ of Kant are to

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aim at showing this insufficient level of subjective will. Hegel thinks that will can

be looked at from an ‘objective’ standpoint, too. Hegel insists that what most

people mean by freedom, the unhindered capacity to act arbitrarily or do as you

please, is not true freedom.127 Genuine freedom, ‘absolute’, ‘concrete’, or

‘positive’ freedom, consists not in a mere capacity or potentiality, but in that

activity which fully actualizes reason.128

Hegel’s conception of freedom is derived from Kant’s conception of autonomy

and Fichte’s conception of self-actualization, a kind of action that has its source

solely in the self-activity of the agent and not at all in anyting alien or foreign to

the agent. Hegel, however, significantly revises this conception as it is found in

Kant and Fichte. For Kant, autonomous action is that which has its source in the

agent’s pure reason and not in the external (natural and social) world. For Hegel,

however, this represents a false and rigid conception of the relation of the self to

otherness. Spirit, Hegel insists, is ‘self-restoring sameness’;129 it stands in essential

relation to otherness, and its actualization consists not in a seperation from its

other, but in overcoming that otherness. Spirit’s freedom, therefore, consists not in

holding itself seperate from what is other, but rather in mastering it and making it

one’s own. Freedom, once again, therefore, consists in ‘being with oneself in an

other’(Beisichselbstsein in einem Andern).130 When the other which I distinguish

127 Hegel, G.W.F., Philosophy of Right, §15R. 128 Ibid., §22R. 129 Hegel, G.W.F., Phenomenology of Spirit, §18. ‘Self-restoring sameness’ may be understood as

an archetype of a totalitarian point of view. But, in fact, it will not be true since Hegel’s most significant emphasis is on different desires and different satisfactions which can be and also must be in a society. This ‘sameness’ is not the sameness as not having any difference, or, in appropriate words, as not having any otherness within itself. But, in fact, it involves in, and lets the freeplay for, any difference.

130 Hegel, G.W.F., Philosophy of Right, §23.

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from myself does not limit but expresses myself, then it is not a hindrance on me,

but is in fact the very actualization of my freedom. This ‘being with oneself in an

other’ is realized only in the level of ‘ethical life’ (Sittlichkeit) which makes

possible for the true expression and actualization of the independent self.

Consequently, freedom in ethical life, within which ‘autonomous action’ rests in

peace, provides its energy from the emprical/social world and social institutions

within this realm are the self-expression of the autonomous agent. Social

institutions and our duties within them are not hindrances on freedom but in fact

actualizations of freedom, when the content of these institutions is rational and the

performance of our duties is a vehicle for our self-actualization. According to

Hegel, the institutions of the modern state have a claim on us only because they

are rational.131 In such cases, we are ‘with ourselves’ in our duties and in the

social order of which we are a part; far from setting limits to our freedom, they

constitute its actualization.132

3.6. Freedom Revisited

As Kant looks at the self as ‘already’ rational and moral being and does not

investigate him any further, his approach to justice is universalist. He takes

individual apart from the society and also builds up his moral theory apart from the

political or social theory. In this reasoning, the conceptions of morality and the

conceptions of politics are quite seperate. I think Kant has no clear conception of

the close connection between laws and cultural history on which legality and

131 Ibid., §258R. 132 Ibid., §149.

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morality are built up, nor, for the matter, of the primacy of society as a whole in

the formation and development of laws. In his criticism of Kant, Hegel emphasizes

that without society and right, there would be no individual freedom. As I

mentioned before, for Hegel, the freedom is the right which is recognized by the

other. In fact, there is no clear cut seperation between moral person and political

person. Nothing justifies this seperation and we cannot say that realm of morality

is primary and suppressing over the realm of politics. There is, therefore,

something to his criticism that Kant fails to understand properly the conditions of

freedom. In his view, Kant fails to see that society is the basis of the freedom.

There is always the possibility of clash between the individual’s pursuit of his own

ends and the interests of other individuals pursuing their own ends or, indeed, the

interests of society as a whole. Thus there is no necessity for the seperation

between individual and society or between interest and reason. The question of

justice concerns with the problem of ‘How best we are to order our common life’

and ‘How should I order my life?’ is inextricably linked with the question ‘How

should society be ordered?’. Hegel enlightens, with this questions, the inseperable

unity of individual and society. From this point of view, the question of ‘What is

justice?’ transforms into the question of ‘What is the medium for our action to be a

just action’ or ‘How is possible to be just?’. These are, in fact, not the Platonian

questions, rather Aristotelian.

Thus Hegel’s inquiry for the subject is also the inquiry for the ‘situated’ subject

that should be understood within the realm of relations with the other. He is not

concerned with the deduction of moral principles from ‘pure’ practical reason

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alone, on the contrary, he deals only with relating them to what goes on in the

world.

With Aristotle, he maintains that we discover the good of thing alone with its nature. Thus philosophical science, through it deals with an order more perfect than the emprical one, must begin with the emprical, reworking it through thought to discover its essence. The meaning of Hegel’s attack on the ‘ought’ is that rational action in the world proceeds not from ideals set up independently of what is, but from a rational comprehension of what is.133

I think that since the moral law of Kant arises from the self itself and not from the

concrete needs and interests of the individual and society, in general, he cannot

pass from the ‘I’ to the ‘we’. This transition is from the moral point of view to the

ethical one. “Kantian ‘moral law’ has its spring in a desire to create and live within

an ideal community where everyone is treated, and treats everyone else, as an end

in himself.”134 With this expression, Kant desribes an ideal community of the

‘future’ and does not investigate for the experience of being ‘here’ and ‘now’.

Hegel’s conceptualization of ‘ethical life’ (Sittlichkeit) in comparison with Kant’s

conceptualization of ‘morality’ (Moralität) defines almost all ‘here and now’

forms of the existent modern life, i.e., the very essence of modern society and life.

In this realm, ethical truth is nothing, but recognized law and custom, as rationally

comprehended by philosophy.135 The members of a social order will not be

generally fulfilled by their ethical duties unless the social order as a whole is

harmonious and well constituted. Further, reflective individuals will not be able to

find their lives in society fulfilling unless their reflection reveals to them the

133 Wood, Allen, “Does Hegel Have an Ethics”, in The Monist, La Salle, IL 61301, 1991, p.367. 134 Williams, Howard, Kant’s Political Philosophy, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1983, p.230. 135 Hegel, G.W.F., Philosophy of Right, §141R.

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rational structure of their society. It provides that ethical virtue and ethical duty are

possible for reflective individuals only in a society which is objectively rational.

Only such a society is ‘ethical’ in Hegel’s sense of the term.

From this point of view, social and moral philosophy, individual and society

should be all in harmony. The deficient character and imperfectibility of individual

cannot be understood by remaining in subjective and individual will of Kant’s

moral philosophy, but on the contrary, can be understood by the whole within

which individual is a member. “Unlike Rousseau [unlike also Hegel -g.a.], Kant

does not attribute man’s moral and political imperfectibility to the individualistic

structure of society, but rather to man’s dual nature.”136

According to Hegel, Greek society was the first form of ethical life only because it

was among the Greeks that the value of individuality first developed; moreover,

because modern society displays the higher flowering of individuality in the form

of persons with abstract rights and subjects with moral freedom, it is more fully

ethical than ancient Greece.137

But, although modern society is the higher flowering of individuality, Hegel is also

aware that the modern principle of subjective reflection, i.e., the principle of free

individual, has a tendency to alienate individuals from one another, from their

social relationships, and, in final analysis, from themselves. He sees this tendency

at work in the atomistic individualism of Enlightenment’s social theory and in the

natural law theories. Because these theories reveal the human being and his

136 Williams, Howard, Kant’s Political Philosophy, p.73. 137 Ibid., §150R.

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relations with the others in abstract terms like ‘human nature’ or ‘natural law’.

Concrete and determinate relations within society cannot be understood by these

abstractions. For Hegel, ‘need of philosophy’ is to re-establish, through reason’s

conceptual thought, the harmony between self and world which has been rent by a

culture based on subjective reflection. Through this endevaour, world or society,

whatever we call it, will cease to be an ‘alien’ to the subject and the unity of

subjective will and objective will is provided.

Hegelian ethics is founded on both this unity which overcomes the gap between

subjectivity and objectivity caused the alienation of the self and on the concept of

freedom. His conception of ethical life reveals explicitly the reconciliation of

‘spontaneous harmony’ and ‘free community’ as a condition for the possibility of

all social relationships. On this conception, a ‘free society’ is not merely one that

protects personal rights (Hobbes) and provides for the subjective freedom and

welfare of individuals (libertarian-liberal). It is one in which the individual good of

its members is brought into rational harmony and grounded in a collective end,

which its members understand and pursue both spontaneously and rationally for its

own sake.138

Unlike the abstract character of individual and subjective will, Hegel deals only

with the actualization of a social or collective will which is possible in ‘ethical

life’. For Hegel, this concreteness carries on two moments and their unity. These

moments are the ‘particularity’ and the ‘universality’ of the will.

138 Wood, Allen, Hegel’s Ethics, in Cambridge Companion to Hegel, ed.by. Ameriks, Karl

(ed.by.), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, 2000, p.231.

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Every self-consciousness knows itself (i) as universal, as the potentiality of abstracting from everything determinate, and (ii) as particular, with a determinate object, content, and aim. Still, both these moments are only abstractions; what is concrete and true (and everything true is concrete) is the universality which has the particular as its opposite, but the particular which by its reflection into itself has been equalized with the universal.139

By this definition, Hegel aims to show the passage from the ‘subjective will’

which first appears as ‘natural desire’ into the ‘rational and universal’ will. The

particular side of the will begins with its natural desires140; from these desires,

through reflective choice, the individual pursues its happiness and interest among

other individuals. The satisfaction of these needs, inclinations, passions, opinions,

etc. is welfare or happiness. According to Hegel, this is the level of individual’s

self-interested good, that is to say, particularity of the will. However, Hegel

emphasizes the universality of the will and it is provided by individual’s self-

actualization. This self-actualization is realized only through directing our

particular will into the ends of society which is larger than our individual good.

Otherwise we cannot mention individual’s self-actualization.

Finally, Hegel thinks that we can regard our individual’s will as concrete and

determinate only if we are aware of being a part of the whole and can integrate our

individual’s good into the collective ends. This can be happened, in Hegel’s

system, in the ethical life where social institutions put us into concrete

relationships with others. In this realm, individual participates into a group of

people within which he realizes his own interests and provides self-actualization.

The subjective character of his action is recognized by the others and it acquires an

139 Hegel, G.W.F., Philosophy of Right, §7. 140 Ibid., §11.

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objective status. Thus in order for an action to be ‘ethical’, it should be recognized

by outside of the action itself. Through the recognition of others, self-conscious

being conceives that ethical action should be done in the form of the right and

welfare in the external world and not for the duty’s own sake. Self-conscious

subjects are the carrier of ‘what is good’ and ‘what is dutiful’. These are only

realized in the self-conscious actions. Ethical life has its actuality through self-

conscious action.141 Ethical life within which social institutions are the vehicle of

the rationality and freedom, in Hegel’s point of view, does not mean the realm of

hegemony or that of totalitarian structure, on the contrary, it refers to the realm

that shows us where our freedom begins and also that lets our freedom to be fully

actualized. Hegel says in my consciousness of this, I am free.142

141 Ibid., §142. 142 Ibid., §268.

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CHAPTER IV

CONCLUSION

The philosophy of Hegel, in general, is a system within which all branches of

knowledge are systematically analyzed and are necessarily dependent on each

other. An overlooked sight towards this system might be irritated from the strict

necessity, but in a deeper insight, system, despite having the logical necessity of

concepts, includes in itself contingency and difference. The unity of the system is

not that which excludes the contingency and otherness. For this reason, The

Phenomenology is the expression of the reconciliation between ‘historical

contingency’ and ‘logical necessity’. Starting from the Lebenswelt of Hellenic

World through the historical stages of Christianity and Enlightenment Hegel

examines the experience of consciousness.This examination, which is placed in

The Phenomenology, can be read as a philosophy of culture or that of history. But,

when we compare this idea with the aim of Hegel it is not true. Because The

Phenomenology is the first part of Hegel’s entire system and cannot be seperated

from the other parts.

Hegel, in his philosophical system, does not begin by studying ‘human nature’ or

any other concept, which is abstract in character, as an introductory stage to his

philosophy so that he never deduced his philosophical theory from an a priori

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concept of human nature. This is the reason why, in The Phenomenology of Spirit,

he starts with ‘ordinary consciousness’ and desribes the transition of it through the

‘struggle for recognition’ into the self-consciousness. Nor does he construct his

system on the ‘ready-made’ and ‘self-contained’ subjectivity. Hegel starts

examining consciousness and its object without any presupposition and does not

add anything alien to their ‘immediate’ relation. In this process, i.e., the process of

knowing, consciousness evolves itself and relates to other consciousnesses.

History and cognition are brought together. The experience of ‘cognition’ is

accompanied by the experience of ‘action’. This is defined in The Phenomenology

corresponding to the consideration of the historical phenomena. It leads us to make

a conclusion that knowledge is made up by the end of the process that it requires

socio-cultural and historical character of the relations of human beings. Hegel’s

system of philosophy shows the deficient character of making empty abstractions

in political or ethical theory. Knowledge, according to Hegel, should be mediated

by life-experience and cultural affairs.

Any theory which is started with ‘a priori’ concepts or ‘abstractions’ cannot be

fully aware of the life-world of the individual, nor it might make a relation

between the individual and the society. For the theory requires ready made

concepts and reason ‘ahistorical’ it might not conceive the true essence of human

being, but admit him as a fixed and limited being. Through this limitation we can

only reach to the individualistic character of the individual and that of society in

general. The problem of the philosophical thinking of Enlightenment was resulted

from this fact that its basic ideas were only abstractions such as the idea of

freedom, that of equality, etc. These universal ideas are not being realized and find

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their true and determinate contents unless the mediation between subject and ideas

are well exhibited. Hegel, by means of this opposition, clarifies the close

connection between ‘rationality’ and ‘actuality’. Hegel, because of this reason,

opposes to the concept ‘a priorism’, which excludes any determinancy in the social

and cultural life. In his philosophical insight, ‘rationality’ and ‘actuality’ are only

brought together by showing the true mediation between the individual and

society.

I think Hegel was the first to be aware of the account of his time’s ‘social contract’

theory which alienated individual from the society by postulating abstract

conceptions such as ‘human nature’. This caused him to be alienated from his

work, from social environment and also from himself. The real problem for Hegel

is this problem of alienation in modern culture.

In this respect, Hegel opposes to the individualistic attitude of this kind of theories

and while starting with his social philosophy he does not prefer to make such

abstractions. He begins with immediate concepts like desire, feeling, need, etc.

These concepts lead to the concept of work and labour which are the basic human

interests and we don’t need to go beyond their immediate existences. By beginning

with ‘desire’ and ‘desire for recognition’ Hegel explains the very fundamental

need of human for being social. The satisfactions of desires and the need for being

social cannot be seperated from each other, according to Hegel. From this point of

view, the quest for the knowledge is the quest for being social. The process of

knowing requires the ‘intersubjective’ relationship among the people. Individual is

investigated in the society and vice versa. Theoretical activity of human being

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cannot be any further apart from practical activity. Practical activity implies the

sociality of human being or the state of being social, but there is not, at first, a

relation of mutual recognition among people. There are only conflicting parties

and they encounter with each other in the fight to death. Hegel generalizes this

conflicting relation of recognition to all historical phenomena. At the end of this

struggle for recognition, self-consciousnesses will receive their independent and

true self-certainty by means of being with themselves in the other. They now find

satisfaction and enjoy their freedom. Because the other does not restrict the self’s

free act, but the other summons the self to the responsibility and freedom, the

otherness is disappeared. This realm which provides the link for self-actualizing

and self-fullfilment of the individual is the realm of ‘ethical life’ (Sittlichkeit)

within which individual who finds a possibility to develop his interests and his

moral action, acquires an ‘objective’ status by the recognition of the others. Ethical

life, for Hegel, is the realm of solution for any conflicting individuations.

Through this analysis, Hegel displays the components of life-experiences. The

concepts he used make for Hegel the route to ‘intersubjective’ satisfactions of

needs which lead to primary and secondary socializations of man, namely, family

and civil society. In all those stages of socialization there is the role of conflict.

Since Hegel’s account of consciousness is evolutionary and not stable and fixed,

the relation between individual and other individual or between individual and

society are always in conflict. Because consciousness finds its counterpart in the

society. The Phenomenology represents this dialectical relationship in all its stages.

The conflicting structure of his philosophical system indeed is the positive aspect

of his philosophy. This provides for his philosophical thinking a much more

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realistic insight. Thus human beings have rights as a result of a historical and

social struggle, which Hegel calls the struggle for recognition. This view of the

nature of rights finds its complete exposition in The Phenomenology of Spirit and

also Philosophy of Right.

The reason why I intend to examine two main works of Hegel is that his theory

provides the strong connection between the theory of knowledge and political

theory. We can all be sure about this fact that his critique of Kant’s philosophy is

both a critique of Kant’s epistemology and political theory: his theories on will,

contract, freedom, and law. While he is critizing Kant’s theory of knowledge it is

not apart from his political and social philosophy. In this study, concepts

mentioned above are exhibited within the whole scale of the system.

Finally, Hegel’s endevaour is to criticize all the attempts which make a seperation

among the different aspects of the life compartments and which restrict our

philosophical thinking into a common sense. The destruction of the integrity of

knowledge, in general, results from the destruction of the integrity of human being.

Reconstructing of this integrity and the unity of theoretical and practical activity

were the main purpose of Hegel’s philosophy. Because any activity of human

being includes both ‘cognition’ and ‘action’. Through the unity of these we are

able to pass beyond the theory of knowledge and obtain the ethico-social character

of the action. Hegel, by making emphasis upon the subjects of struggle for

recognition, social institutions, alienation of human being in and individualistic

attitude of modern life, enlighten this character of the action. His solution to the

91

problem of conflicting parts was the ‘ethical life’. Yet it has not been realized until

now and it keeps on remaining as an idea of an ideal community.

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